Colours in Portuguese: as cores, ranked by use
The colours in Portuguese are vermelho (red), azul (blue), verde (green), amarelo (yellow), laranja (orange), rosa (pink), roxo (purple), marrom (brown), preto (black), branco (white) and cinza (grey). "Colours" is as cores (or colors, in American spelling). Two of those words are Brazilian: Portugal says castanho for brown and cinzento for grey. Below are the words, how their endings change, where the two countries differ, and a ranking of the colours films actually say.
The colours in Portuguese
| English | Portuguese | Say it (Brazil) | Forms |
|---|---|---|---|
| red | vermelho | ver-MEH-lyoo | vermelho, vermelha, vermelhos, vermelhas |
| yellow | amarelo | ah-mah-REH-loo | amarelo, amarela, amarelos, amarelas |
| black | preto | PREH-too | preto, preta, pretos, pretas |
| white | branco | BRAN-koo | branco, branca, brancos, brancas |
| purple | roxo | HOH-shoo | roxo, roxa, roxos, roxas |
| blue | azul | ah-ZOOW | azul, azuis |
| green | verde | VEHR-jee | verde, verdes |
| brown | marrom | mah-HOM | marrom, marrons |
| orange | laranja | lah-RAN-zha | never changes |
| pink | rosa | HOH-za | never changes |
| grey | cinza | SEEN-za | never changes |
Three sounds to watch, all Brazilian. An r at the start of a word, and a double rr, are said like an English h: rosa, roxo, marrom. X in roxo is "sh". And lh in vermelho is close to the lli of "million".
Which colours change their ending
A colour comes after the noun and agrees with it.
- Colours ending in -o have four forms: o carro vermelho (the red car), a casa vermelha (the red house), os carros vermelhos, as casas vermelhas.
- Azul and verde change only for the plural: o céu azul, os olhos azuis; a porta verde, as portas verdes.
- Laranja, rosa and cinza never change. They are nouns used as colours, the orange, the rose and ash: uma camisa laranja, duas camisas laranja; flores rosa.
For lighter and darker shades add claro (light) or escuro (dark): azul-claro, verde-escuro.
Brazil and Portugal
Two colours have different everyday words on the two sides of the Atlantic, and the subtitles show it.
| Colour | Word | Brazil, per million | Portugal, per million |
|---|---|---|---|
| brown | marrom | 10.0 | 0.8 |
| brown | castanho | 3.3 | 9.3 |
| grey | cinza | 12.7 | 5.1 |
| grey | cinzento | 1.9 | 6.6 |
Brazil says marrom and Portugal castanho; Brazil says cinza and Portugal mostly cinzento. In Brazil castanho is used mainly of hair and eyes: cabelo castanho, "brown hair". More of the differences between the two are in Brazilian vs European Portuguese.
Preto and negro
Portuguese has two words for black. Preto is the ordinary colour word: um gato preto, "a black cat". Negro is also "black", and is the commoner of the two in subtitles, at 64.5 times per million words in Brazil against 45.2 for preto; but it is also the noun for a Black person and is used in set phrases such as buraco negro, "black hole". The ranking below counts only preto, so its figure for black is an undercount.
Which colours do Portuguese films say most?
We added up every form of each colour word in Brazilian film and television subtitles.
| Colour | Word | Forms counted | Per million words | The count also includes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| white | branco | branco, branca, brancos, brancas | 173.3 | |
| red | vermelho | vermelho, vermelha, vermelhos, vermelhas | 122.5 | |
| blue | azul | azul, azuis | 85.8 | |
| black | preto | preto, preta, pretos, pretas | 70.7 | |
| green | verde | verde, verdes | 64.4 | |
| pink | rosa | rosa | 37.9 | also the flower, and a woman's name |
| yellow | amarelo | amarelo, amarela, amarelos, amarelas | 30.3 | |
| brown | marrom | marrom, marrons, castanho, castanha, castanhos, castanhas | 21.8 | marrom and castanho together |
| orange | laranja | laranja | 18.5 | also the fruit |
| grey | cinza | cinza, cinzento, cinzenta, cinzentos, cinzentas | 17.2 | cinza is also “ash” |
| purple | roxo | roxo, roxa, roxos, roxas | 11.5 |
Branco is first, at 173.3 times per million words, then vermelho at 122.5 and azul at 85.8. Roxo is last, at 11.5. Laranja and rosa are ceilings: the first is also the fruit, the second the flower and a woman's name.
The same order in every language
Black, white and red are the three most-mentioned colours in Italian and in German, and the commonest three in Portuguese are white, red and blue, with black next. Orange and purple are at or near the bottom in all of them. That is close to a pattern linguists noticed long before anyone counted subtitles: in 1969 Brent Berlin and Paul Kay found that languages which have only a few basic colour words nearly always have black and white first, then red, and that purple, pink, orange and grey come last. The colours a language names first are also, it seems, the ones its speakers go on mentioning most.
Learn them in a sentence
- De que cor é? — What colour is it?
- É vermelho. — It's red.
- Qual é a sua cor favorita? — What's your favourite colour?
- Eu gosto de verde. — I like green.
- Ela tem olhos azuis. — She has blue eyes.
- Quero uma camiseta preta. — I want a black T-shirt.
No colour is common enough to be among the thousand words Brazilian films say most: the top of that list is mostly grammar, as the 100 most common Portuguese words shows. They are in the course's Portuguese word list. The Portuguese course, Verbavia (our own course), teaches them with the nouns they describe, free on the web. Other beginner sets: numbers 1 to 100 in Portuguese, the days of the week and the months of the year. The same ranking for two other languages: colours in Italian and colours in German.
Two more beginner sets, ranked the same way: greetings in Portuguese and family members in Portuguese.
Sources
- Priberam, Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa: marrom, castanho, cinza, cinzento, preto and negro.
- The counts are from OpenSubtitles 2018 (Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J., 2016, aclanthology.org) through Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords lists, content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, github.com. They are computed by
scripts/frequency_thousand.pyand printed from its output rather than typed. - Wikipedia: Basic Color Terms, on Berlin and Kay's 1969 study of the order in which languages name colours.