Colours Lesson 9 of the french course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 French colours sit behind the thing they describe, so a red ball is un ballon rouge, "a ball red", like a label stuck on after the name. 1 Colours also change their spelling to match the thing: a green jumper is un pull vert, but a green skirt is une jupe verte, because jupe is a feminine word. 3 Some colours never change: those already ending in e, like rouge and jaune, keep the same form, and marron and orange, named after a chestnut and a fruit, never change at all. 4 Hair has its own words: a girl with dark hair is brune, and ginger hair is roux or rousse, never rouge. 5 The French flag is bleu, blanc, rouge ("BLUH, BLAHN, ROOZH"): blue, white, red, in that order from the flagpole. 6 Colour words come after the noun in French: un ballon rouge (a red ball), un chat noir (a black cat), une voiture bleue (a blue car). 7 With a feminine noun most colours add -e: vert becomes verte, and then the t is said: un pull vert ("VAIR"), une jupe verte ("VAIRT"). 8 bleu means blue and is said "BLUH" with rounded lips, not "bloo"; bleue sounds the same. 9 A few colours change more: blanc ("BLAHN") becomes blanche ("BLAHNSH"), and violet becomes violette. 10 marron (brown) and orange never change, not even in the plural: des chaussures marron (brown shoes). 11 jaune ("ZHOHN") means yellow; it already ends in e, so it is the same with un and une: un ballon jaune, une fleur jaune. 12 For hair: brun / brune means dark-haired, blond / blonde means blond, roux / rousse means ginger; cheveux rouges would mean hair dyed bright red. 13 rose ("ROZ") means pink and is also the flower une rose; as a colour it takes an s in the plural: des tee-shirts roses. 14 gris ("GREE") means grey, not green; the s is silent; with a feminine noun it is grise ("GREEZ"); green is vert. 15 rouge means red and already ends in e: une pomme rouge, un camion rouge. 16 noir is the masculine and noire the feminine; both sound "NWAR": un chien noir, une souris noire. 17 Slang here: "posh" (UK) means fancy; "like" at the end (Yorkshire) adds a shrug; "whit" (Scotland) means what; "gonna" means going to; "loses it" means laughs a lot; "eh" (Canada) asks you to agree; "sweet as" (New Zealand) means great; "wee" (Scotland) means small. ← previous Numbers 70 to 100: soixante-dix and quatre-vingtsnext → Days of the week and months↑ back to French This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/9-colours/