Color words are one of the most useful tools we have for identifying things. It’s a lot easier to say “I’ll have the blue one” than “I’ll take that roundish one, with the rough edges, to the left of the rectangular one.” Thus, learning how to name and pronounce colors in German is a useful skill to have in your back pocket. Really, after figuring out how to say “hello,” it’s probably one of the first things you should conquer.
A brief usage note: colors in German are adjectives and so, for the most part, they come before the noun when you’re describing something. “The red car” would be “das rote Auto.” Here, there is also often an ending -e added when the color comes before a noun. And when you want to say “light blue” or “dark blue” the words for “light” and “dark” are appended to the front of the color word, as you see with hellblau (light blue). With that knowledge, here are the basic terms to get you started as you learn German.
How Do You Say The Colors In German?
the color — die Farbe
red — rot
orange — orange
yellow — gelb
green — grün
blue — blau
light blue — hellblau
dark blue — dunkelblau
purple — lila
pink — rosa
brown — braun
black — schwarz
white — weiß
light — hell
dark — dunkel
Conjugating The Colors: Using Black And White In German
We covered the basic forms of the colors above, but if you want to use them in a sentence, things get a little more complicated. While in English the word “blue” is always going to be “blue” no matter what object it describes, mostGerman color words need to change depending on the noun it’s referring to. That means the ending of the color changes with examples using “white” and “black” in German:
- For masculine nouns, the color ends in -er. For example, der schwarzer Hund or der weißer Hund.
- For feminine nouns, the color ends in -e. For example, die schwarze Katze or die weiße Katze.
- For neuter nouns, the color ends in -es. For example, das schwarzes Auto or die weißes Auto.
- For plural nouns, the color ends in -e. For example, die schwarze Häuser or die weiße Häuser.
Note: You only conjugate the color when it appears right before the noun. If you were to say “The cat is white,” it would be Die Katze ist weiß.
If it’s helpful, you can keep in mind that the end of the color conjugations matches the form of “the,” so der goes with -er, das goes with -es and die goes with -e. To add the primary colors (rot, gelb and blau) and grün to the mix, this chart shows just how straightforward the conjugations system is.
There are also a few colors that are “invariable,” meaning that they don’t change depending on the noun they describe. These include rosa (“pink”), lila (“purple”) and orange (“orange”).
German Colors Quiz
Thing you’ve learned everything there is to know about German colors? Take this short quiz to see how much you’ve retained. If you don’t have everything down just yet, don’t worry, you’ll know them in no time!
