Clothing & Colors
Clothing & Colors
Color words in French are adjectives, so they change form to agree with the noun they describe — a shirt can be bleu or bleue depending purely on the noun's gender, something English colour words never do.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Colors agree with the noun's gender
un pantalon bleu (masc.) / une chemise bleue (fem.)
blue pants / a blue shirt — English 'blue' never changes no matter what it describes
Most French color adjectives add -e for feminine nouns, exactly like other regular adjectives: bleu → bleue, vert → verte, noir → noire. English color words are completely invariable — 'blue' is spelled and pronounced identically whether it describes pants, a shirt, or a hundred shirts — so remembering to adjust the color's spelling (and sometimes pronunciation) to match the noun is a new habit. A handful of colors named directly after objects (marron 'chestnut-brown', orange) don't change at all in either gender or number — these are worth flagging as exceptions since they behave like fixed nouns being borrowed as colors, closer to how English 'orange' also doubles as both a fruit and a fixed color word.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| French | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| une chemise | oon shuh-MEEZ | a shirt (fem.) |
| un pantalon | uhn pahn-tah-LOHN | pants (masc.) |
| une robe | oon rob | a dress (fem.) |
| des chaussures | day shoh-SOOR | shoes |
| bleu / bleue | bluh | blue |
| rouge | roozh | red |
| vert / verte | vair | green |
| noir / noire | nwahr | black |
| blanc / blanche | blahn / blahnsh | white |
| porter | por-TAY | to wear |