Sunny Lisbon

Today I’ll introduce a new topic to this blog, since it is a common thing to find in your typical travel guide. I’ll try to do it a little bit better than the travel guides usually do it, so I hope you’ll enjoy it. When learning a new language we normally start by learning the colors or the numbers : unless of course you are in a more relax environment and in that case you will learn the bad language first.

Unlike the English language, where only a single word represents a color, in Portuguese you can have multiple words for the same color, given the object it applies to, the context or even the part of the country you came from! But relax, it’s not that hard.

• Blue – This is an easy one, just say azul if you are talking about a single object (céu azul means blue sky) or azuis if you talking about more than one object (olhos azuis means blue eyes).
• Green – Another easy one, just say verde. It changes a bit in it’s plural form (bandeira verde means green flag and olhos verdes means green eyes)
• Orange – Ok, this can be tricky, since it there two different ways of saying it, and both are correct. So you can say laranja or cor-de-laranja (meaning color of the orange, the fruit). There is no change in the plural form (camisolas laranja / camisolas cor-de-laranja and camisola laranja / camisola cor-de-laranja mean orange sweaters and orange sweater)
• Pink – Pink has the same rule that of orange, so you can say rosa or cor-de-rosa (color of the rose, the flower). Again no changes in the plural form (vestido rosa / vestido cor-de-rosa and vestidos rosa / vestidos cor-de-rosa mean pink dress and pink dresses)
• White – White changes in the plural form and in the nature of the object it applies to. For instance you can have a “pomba branca” (white dove, female) or a “carro branco” (white car, male). For the plural form, just add a “s” to the end (carros brancos for white cars and pombas brancas for white doves)

Keep in touch, we’ll learn more colors soon enough!