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Question about colours

Byakko

後輩
29 May 2008
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I downloaded a free program on the web to give it a trial... it's actually working pretty well, and I'll most likely end up upgrading to the paid version.

During the quizzes it asks me to write the words for colours in Romanji, the program then converts to hiragana and from there to Kanji if required (it seems to be required on most words I'm learning now).. and all of them have -iro on the end of them (except Black which I can't remember the word for at the present... Darn, back to studying after asking my question).

Now here's my question.

I know that Shiro means white, but when I'm spelling it on the program it won't accept it as correct unless I add the -iro ending to it. Why would it be doing this? What does the -iro particle mean? When I was learning in class we were taught the colours without the iro behind them (in particular, midori was the easiest to learn), so why is the program insisting that I spell it midoriiro to get the proper kanji spelling?

Any help would be appreiciated! Thanks.

Oh in case anyone asks, the program is one that was featured on the Tofugu website, known as BYKI or Before You Know It... If anyone's used it before, please let me know what you think about it.

(And now, I'm going to go read the convienantly placed post on how to type in Japanese next time so that I can be more clear in my questions. 👍)
 
いろ(色) means colour.

so "Shiroiro" しろいろ(白色) means "White colour"

"Shiro" by itself is the noun "white".

Black by the way is kuro, くろ(黒)、くろいろ(黒色) is "Black colour".

As for your program...well I have no idea why ^^ Sorry ^^
 
I know that Shiro means white, but when I'm spelling it on the program it won't accept it as correct unless I add the -iro ending to it. Why would it be doing this? What does the -iro particle mean? When I was learning in class we were taught the colours without the iro behind them (in particular, midori was the easiest to learn), so why is the program insisting that I spell it midoriiro to get the proper kanji spelling?

Any help would be appreiciated! Thanks.

I'm afraid that as far as colours are concerned, the pogram is not correct.

Most colours one can add "-iro" (-colour) but it is not a must. Also it is not common for white, black, red, and blue.
Especially we do not usually say "shiro-iro" or "kuro-iro" or "aka-iro" in normal conversation, and when we see kanji 白色 or 黒色 or 赤色 we tend to pronounce them as "haku-shoku" "koku-shoku" and "seki-shoku".
Green often used with "iro" (midori-iro) but again "iro" is not a must.
To say "a green pen", both "midori no pen" or "midoriiro no pen" are correct and acceptable.

The one exception I can think of is brown - 茶 (cha). Of course it can mean "brown" on its own and often used without "-iro" when it is obvious from the context that it means colour, but if you just mention it as a colour, it will be clearer if you add "iro" otherwise one might take it as tea, not colour.
 
Thank you for your help everyone.

Fortunately I can change the program so that it accepts shiro instead of shiro-iro.

I thought that -iro meant colour, and I'm happy to have my thought shown as correct.

It's not a bad program overall... The ability to make my own lists should help quite a bit when I actually purchase the program. As well, I like the fact that it makes you learn Kanji... Kanji can be impossible to learn, and I'd rather start as early as possible.
 
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