Grey – the Colour of…?

When we talk, we usually do not think too much about the words we are using, but sometimes some concept will spark our interest and encourage a deeper reflection: what was first, orange the fruit or orange the colour? Or is brown called brown because it is the colour of some people’s eyebrows? 🙃

Japanese uses an astonishing number of such parallels to build its colour-related vocabulary. If you want to describe something grey, you say it is haiiro 灰色, literally the colour of ash, whereas hai means ‘ash’ and iro means ‘colour’. Sometimes, you will also hear it is nezumiiro ねずみ色, literally the ‘colour of a mouse’. Brown, in turn, is chairo 茶色 – the ‘colour of tea’. Pink can be momoiro 桃色, the ‘colour of a peach’, or barairo バラ色, the ‘colour of a rose’. Mizuiro 水色 is the ‘colour of water’, namely light blue. Of course, not all colours in Japanese are like this. Black and white, for example, do not follow this pattern. Still, it is a pretty poetic way of describing the world.

Written by AL