Japanese Color Vocabulary (色 – Iro)

Let’s learn the basic colors in Japanese!

To start, the word for “color” itself is 色 (いろ – iro).

You will notice that some color words have this at the end, which essentially means the color name is literally,
“color of ____”.

For example, the color brown is 茶色 (ちゃいろ – chairo) which literally means “the color of tea”.

One key difference to note in Japanese is that there are two main ways to express each color, in a noun form and an adjectival form.

The noun form describes the color of something is or was. This is done in the structure of

subject + is/are + color

For example, “That car is red.”
(この車は赤です。– Kono kuruma wa aka desu.)

The adjectival form is marked by the の (no) particle in front of the noun like

color + の + subject

For example, “purple shoes”

(紫の靴 – Murasaki no kutsu.)

Now that you know the basics, here’s a list of different colors:

English	Japanese
	Kanji	Furigana	Romaji	Katakana	Romaji
Red	赤	あか	aka	レッド	reddo
Orange	橙色	だいだいいろ	daidaiiro	オレンジ	orenji
Yellow	黄色	きいろ	kiiro	イエロー	iero-
Green	緑	みどり	midori	グリーン	guri-n
Blue	青	あお	ao	ブルー	buru-
Purple	紫	むらさき	murasaki	パープル	pa-puru
Pink	桃色	ももいろ	momoiro	ピンク	pinku
Brown	茶色	ちゃいろ	chairo	ブラウン	buraun
Grey	灰色	はいいろ	haiiro	グレイ	gurei
Black	黒	くろ	kuro	ブラック	burakku
White	白	しろ	shiro	ホワイト	howaito

The next question for most learners is, “Which form do I really need to know?” And the good news is that the katakana tends to be more popular. So luckily since you already speak English and probably know those colors, the katakana form is pretty easy to recognize since they are all English loan words.

However, you will definitely encounter the more traditional kanji versions in literature and other specific places, so be aware!

This topic gets much more complicated, so I encourage you to read more. But this should help you get started!