Lesson 26 of 28
Kanji Unit 26 — the four colours, and the sound of things
about 9 minutes
After this lesson you can
- Use the four colour adjectives, and know why the other colours need の.
- Read 音楽 and 楽しい, and know they share a character.
Words this lesson teaches
- 赤
- red
- 青
- blue, and the green of a traffic light
- 黒
- black
- 色
- colour — 何色, 赤色
- 真
- true — 真ん中, 写真
- 音
- a sound — 音楽
- 楽
- music; enjoyable — 音楽, 楽しい
- 歌
- a song, to sing
- 図
- a drawing, a diagram — 地図, 図書館
What it explains
青 covers more than blue
青 is blue, and it is also the green of a traffic light — 青信号 — and of unripe fruit and new leaves. Japanese drew the line between blue and green in a different place, and the older word kept the ground. This is not a quirk to memorise but a warning: colour words rarely map one to one between languages, and 青 is the case where the mismatch is largest.
写真 is a copied truth
写 is to copy and 真 is true, so a photograph is a copied truth — which is a better description than the English word, and a nice thing to know about a word you will use constantly. 写 arrives in unit 28, so this is the second half of a compound arriving first. That happens often enough that it is worth being comfortable with: hold the half you have and wait.
The scene itself is in the app.
Lesson one of this track is free to read in full. From lesson two on, the story, the audio and the review are part of a free account.