PHRASES:
| Me gustan los automóviles amarillos. | I like yellow cars. |
| “La casa verde” es una gran novela de Vargas Llosa. | The Green House is a great novel of Vargas Llosa. |
| El cielo es de un azul muy claro en la playa. | The sky is a very light blue at the beach. |
| Necesito mi cuaderno negro. | I need my black notebook |
| Mi novia se puso roja. | My girlfriend turned red. |
GRAMMAR:
Since colors are adjectives (they describe what the noun is like), they must agree in number and gender with the nouns to which they are attached. Colors that end in vowels will end in ‘a’ to agree with feminine nouns or ‘o’ to agree with masculine nouns. If a color ends in a consonant, such as ‘azul’, it doesn’t change. To pluralize a color that ends in a vowel, simply add an ‘s’. If the color ends in a consonant, add ‘es’. For example:
| el gato negro | the black cat | |
| los gatos negros. | the black cats | |
| la pared azul | the blue wall | |
| las paredes azules | the blue walls |
Double Colors
Agreement with the noun is slightly different when the name of the color includes two adjectives instead of just one, as in ‘azul claro’ (light blue). The second adjective, in this case, ‘claro’, is the one that must agree with the noun. The first adjective, blue, does not change. For example:
| la casa azul clara | the light blue house | |
| las casas azul claras | the light blue houses |