"We have blue paint."
Translation:Vi har blå färg.
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I had learned "paint" as "måla" on Memrise. When should I use "färg" and when should I use "måla"?
färg is the noun, like in a can of paint. måla is the verb, like in We paint the house.
färg is an en word, and the adjective is in the attributive position so it must be blå here:
Attributive indefinite:
Vi har blå färg - We have blue paint
Vi har ett blått hus - We have a blue house
Vi har blå/blåa böcker - We have blue books
Predicative:
Färgen/En färg är blå
Huset/Ett hus är blått
Böckerna/Böcker är blå/blåa
Attributive definite:
Vi har den blå/blåa färgen - We have the blue paint
Vi har de blå/blåa husen - We have the blue house
Vi har de blå/blåa böckerna - We have the blue books
Why can blå be used instead of blåa for böckerna/böcker if they are plural?
Sorry I missed this question at the time, but I answered it now a lot later under pipthevaliant:s comment.
I must second the question asked by Izzyeff (although I'm kind of hopelessly late): how come that the adjective blå can be used in forms of both 'blå' and 'blåa' when describing a plural noun (böcker/böckerna) or a noun in definite form (all the three examples in 'Attributive definite')?
Also, why don't the definite predicative forms have den/det/de before the adjective? In other words, is it wrong, insted of 'Färgen är blå', to say 'Den färgen är blå'?
Thanks!
It's just a quirk of blå and grå that they work this way. If you take an adjective like röd instead, it's just röd, rött, röda and only one form is possible in each case. I think it's because it's a bit irregular for an adjective to end in å.
About the predicative forms, I explained the same thing to someone else earlier today so I'm just going to copy-paste that answer here, this is how the system works:
With no adjective:
boken = 'the book' – only the end definite article (-en) is used
With an adjective:
den röda boken = 'the red book' – the front definite article (den) is necesssary
For demonstratives:
den boken means the same as den där boken i.e. 'that book'
and if you want to say 'that red book', that is den där röda boken
This means that you can say Den färgen är blå, but it means 'That color is blue'.
I still can not understand why we don't write Vi har en blå färg. ? 'färg' is countable noun or not?
en blå färg is a fine phrase but not a translation. The English sentence doesn't say it's "a" paint.
