Learn the Colors in Spanish – Quick Pronunciation Guide

Roses are indeed red, but violets are actually violet. That’s why it’s important to learn the colors in Spanish before (almost) anything else.

Color is omnipresent in our lives. From the very first moment we become aware of our surroundings, color stimulates our senses. Our mother’s blue eyes comfort us, the yellow banana makes us drool, the red toy car brings excitement and the green veggies are “healthy but disgusting”. Naturally, colors are some of the first words we learn, not just in our native language but in any language. Learning to say the colors in Spanish is also an important first step in learning basic Spanish words. So, let’s dive right in and learn how to say red, blue, green, and more in Spanish.

The colors in Spanish

Spanish colors are easy enough to remember. At least most of them. Why “most”? Because ‘orange’ in Spanish always seems to be problematic.

If you are talking about both the color and the fruit, Real Academia Española states that ‘orange’ in Spanish is ‘naranja’. ‘Anaranjado’, on the other hand, refers to something that is ‘orange-colored’ or ‘oranged’ (if such a word would exist).

Now, there are some people who argue that technically, ‘anaranjado’ is the name of the color and ‘naranja’ is the name of the fruit, but that shouldn’t worry you since Real Academia Española gave the green light to ‘naranja’ to be used for both. After all, RAE is the authority when it comes to linguistic regularization in the Spanish-speaking world.

That being said, the 12 most important colors in Spanish are:

• red — rojo
• pink — rosa
• orange — naranja
• yellow — amarillo
• green — verde
• blue — azul
• brown — marrón
• violet — violeta
• purple — morado / púrpura
• cyan — cian
• turquoise — turquesa
• grey — gris
• white — blanco
• black — negro

Don’t forget that the colors in Spanish are most of the time used as adjectives. Therefore, they must agree with the gender and number of the noun they are determining. For example, ‘red’ in Spanish will be ‘roja’ if you are talking about una chaqueta que es roja (“a jacket that is red”), which is a feminine noun.

The pronunciation of most of these color names can prove to be really tricky if you don’t have the audio handy. Luckily, you can always play this short video to see how the fluent speakers do it in a quick lesson from Mondly:

Want more? Here’s lesson two of colors in Spanish with Mondly:

From 0 to conversational in Spanish

Do you want to see the Spanish colors in action? Get Mondly, the award-winning language learning app that will help you speak Spanish as if you were born in Madrid. It can be really tricky to master the Spanish pronunciation if you don’t actively live in Spain. But with Mondly you’ll have access to a fast and highly efficient learning method that allows you to learn Spanish naturally with:

• practical topics,
• hands-on, interactive language lessons,
• real-life conversations,
• … and so much more.

Start using Mondly for free on your computer or download the app and learn Spanish anytime, anywhere.