Seeing the light - 8 color words with memory tips

1. Color: color, couleur, colore
In Spanish, color is just color, but in French, colors are cooler - couleur. In Italian you might say, "Nice color, eh?" - colore.

2. Red: rojo, rouge, rosso
In French you redden your cheeks with rouge. In Spanish: Oh ho! Now they're rojo! In Italian: Oh so red is rosso.

3. Blue: azul, bleu, blu
In France, the skies are bleu. In Spain they're almost azure - azul. In Italy, you have your pick - blu or azzuro.

4. Green: verde, vert, verde
Like verdigree and verdant spaces, green is vert in French, verde in Spanish and Italian.

5. Yellow: amarillo, jaune, giallo
Imagine Amarillo is the yellow rose of Texas. Don't be jaundiced against learning that the French for yellow is jaune (sorry for that mental image). Finally, the Italian is giallo - imagine yellow jello - it's giallo!

6. Brown: marron, brun, marrone
It looks like maroon, but really it's brown - Spanish and Italian for brown are marron and marrone. In French, it's brun, like brunette. And note that Italian also has bruno.

7. Black: negro, noir, nero
Nero fiddled while Rome burned and the whole city turned black with soot. Sounds like the subject of a film noir - dark movie. Connecting negro and black should be as easy as the interplay between the two words in English has been complex.

8. White: blanco, blanc, bianco
Drawing a blank? Picture Mont Blanc - the snowcapped White Mountain and go from there. Spanish and Italian both have a blank-o: blanco and bianco are almost the same, but Italian usually starts with bi- when Spanish starts with bl-.

An exception to the bl-/bi- rule is blu, which the Italians got from the German blau, not from Latin, hence the unusual (for Italian) letter combination.


BABY EINSTEIN, LANGUAGE NURSERY