Hey there I'm Emma from mmmEnglish.
Today I'll be teaching you how to say twenty advanced colours
in English so you'll get to expand your vocabulary
and learn some more interesting words to use.
We're definitely going to skip over the ones you've already
learned at school: red, green, yellow, blue.
We're going to use some advanced and more
accurate descriptions of colour in this lesson.
You will get to practise your pronunciation, those
tricky consonant clusters and syllable stress and I've also
made all of this available on a handy colour vocabulary
cheat sheet so it's got all of the collocations and
adjectives that I'm going to cover today
plus some extra explanations and examples.
And you can download it
right down in the description box below.
This lesson is definitely going to help you to beautifully
and accurately describe things around you like
clothes, makeup
graphic design, nature, all of these things so
this vocabulary lesson is definitely going to level up your skills.
Make sure you hit that subscribe button
and let's get this rainbow started!
So I'm really excited about this vocabulary lesson because
well I'm not sure maybe some of my regular viewers
have noticed that I've got a green screen going on in my studio
which means I can play around with the colours on screen
and show you what I'm talking about in this lesson.
So I can easily go like this
and like this
and I can show you the colours that I'm talking about.
Now if your brain went: Yep that was white,
that was brown,
that was purple,
you're going to love this lesson because I've got some much
better, much more accurate words to describe the different
shades of colours in English.
Now that is a great collocation to learn.
We use the word shades to talk about different versions
of the same colour.
There are many different shades of yellow
or different shades of green.
And that is exactly how we're going to move through this lesson.
We're going to focus on shades of the same colour.
We'll get started with shades of yellow and brown.
So the first colour is lemon.
So lemon is this pale yellow colour. It's not quite as intense as
yellow. In fact, this colour is often referred to as canary yellow
so see the difference already? We've got two shades of yellow
but there's so much difference between them.
This is lemon yellow and you'll notice that many of these
words actually reference the world around us,
maybe food, flowers, nature
so watch out for these extra words throughout the lesson.
These colours
that remind us of something else in nature.
So this is lemon yellow.
Now this is
mustard.
It's a muted, darker yellow colour, isn't it?
Quite fashionable.
So muted means that it's not bright or shiny.
You can see that this colour isn't as bright as the lemon colour
or the canary yellow and actually as I'm talking, I'm thinking
that one of the really cool things about colours in English
is that most of the time you can add aY
so we could say mustardy.
The new car they bought was mustardy brown.
So it's really great if you're not quite sure of the colour
or the shades. You could say:
The clouds in the sky were a bluey-grey or a bluish-grey.
These are ways to say that it's sort of that colour,
a little bit of that colour, a hint of that colour
but not completely.
Now this is
tawny.
It's this light brown to orange colour.
Now light is a really great way to describe colours that are not
dark or strong and it's often used when little bits of white
or lots of white is mixed in with the colour so it becomes lighter.
And there are a few different ways to describe this.
Another one will come up later on.
But I want you to keep an eye out or an ear out for these
other adverbs and adjectives that you can use to
change the shade of colours in English.
Next up we've got
bronze.
Now that's a really tricky consonant cluster there,
it's just one syllable, that E is silent, bronze.
So bronze is this metallic brown colour
and the adjective metallic is used to describe something that is
shiny so often the paint on cars has that sparkle, that shine in it.
It's metallic.
And funny enough we use this colour bronze
to describe really tanned skin at the beach.
So if you've ever been to an Italian beach in summer
you will see lots of very bronzed people.
Now we have peach.
Make sure you're really landing that last consonant sound there,
that CH sound.
Exaggerate it if you have to while you're
practising out loud with me.
Peach.
Good.
So peach is a colour and a fruit of course, and it's this
beautiful shade of orange, yellow, white
and a touch of pink.
So technically white is not a colour but it is so useful to know
different ways to describe white because there are so many
like this is pearl white.
And it usually has a bit of a shine or a sparkle in it,
much like an actual pearl so it's that little
rainbowy shine over the top of white.
And pearl is often used to describe the really beautiful white
of a car, not the flat white colour but the one with the little sheen
of colour through it.
Pearl white teeth, very, very white teeth
and often makeup as well uses pearl white or pearl
to describe that beautiful coloured sheen.
Now this one is a little tricky to pronounce.
How do you think this word would be pronounced?
Beige.
So can you hear that sound?
It's not very common in English but you do hear it in words like
measure and vision.
So this word is
beige.
So I would describe beige as a pale, dull brown colour.
It doesn't pop, it doesn't stand out, it's not bright.
Interestingly, you can also use this word as an adjective
to describe someone's personality.
It's definitely not a positive adjective to describe a person like this
because it means that they are dull,
kind of boring, they're a bit beige.
Then we have
cream.
So cream is a mix of a little yellow and white
and of course, it references the cream that we use in cooking
so you can imagine that, right?
A cream that you would add to your pasta or dessert, right?
It's inspired by that colour.
And this is
ivory.
So ivory has a little bit more brown, there's a stronger tint of brown
than cream because cream is white with a little tint of yellow,
this is white with a little tint of brown, right?
So you can see the slight variation here and how useful it is to be
able to describe
colour, shades like this with slightly different variations
to have different words to describe it and be more specific.
So now let's talk about shades of red and orange.
We have
auburn.
It's the same vowel sound in door.
So you can hear it has two syllables
auburn.
And the first one is the stressed one, the second one
reduces to the schwa, auburn.
Auburn is this rich red-brown colour and it is most commonly used
to describe hair.
Do you know anyone or can you think of anyone who has auburn
coloured hair?
So this is
burgundy.
It's a deep red colour with really strong hints of purple and
deep is a really lovely word to describe a strong dark colour.
It's often used with
dark shades of red, green, blue, even purple,
so we use deep to describe that, like the deep,
dark depths of the ocean. It's that really, really, deep, deep blue.
So we use it with some darker colours to add that extra
extra stronger meaning than just dark.
Let's talk about some beautiful shades of pink now starting with
coral.
So as you can see, this colour is a blend between bright pink
and orange.
You remember me speaking about bright colours earlier right?
We often use bright together with a colour to talk about
one that really pops out so we say bright pink,
bright yellow, bright orange.
Speaking of bright, this is fuchsia.
I love this word.
The spelling makes it really difficult to try and pronounce
right but if you close your eyes
and you just listen to the words that I'm saying, the sounds that I'm
making, it might be a little easier.
Fuchsia.
Fuchsia is this vibrant, pinkish, purple colour
and you can use vibrant to describe a colour that is really strong
and lively, it's sharp, it's intense.
So vibrant, I'm sure you can guess is the opposite
of muted and dull.
Okay so vibrant is very full of life.
Now magenta is also another fabulous shade of pink.
It's quite similar to fuchsia because it's blended with purple,
magenta.
So we've got three syllables there.
Can you hear where the strongest stress is?
Magenta.
It's on that second syllable.
Magenta really is like this hot pink that has this tone of purple in it.
It's really bright and intense
like it might almost be burning your eyeballs a little bit right now,
I hope not.
Let's go through some shades of blue and green now.
Starting with teal.
This is teal.
So it's just one syllable and it's this lovely blue-green colour,
very calming, teal, which is different to
aqua.
So in English, the name for this bluish green colour is aqua
and that colour is very similar to aquamarine
which is this bright greenish-blue colour,
a little different.
Notice how I said bluish-green for aqua
and greenish-blue for aquamarine.
This quite literally is the definition of the difference between
the two of them. They're very similar in colour, tone right,
one is a little more green, the other is a little more blue.
They're similar but not quite the same as
turquoise.
So it's another really tricky one to say
if you're just looking at the word.
Turquoise.
Again, turquoise is a mix between a brilliant blue
and a brilliant green.
Now the adjective brilliant means that it glistens, it shines.
It reminds you of shallow water on a
pristine, tropical beach doesn't it, right?
Just imagine that.
So instead of saying: Look at the stunning blue water.
You could say:
Look at the stunning turquoise water.
Much more impressive.
And then we've got
emerald.
It's this really vivid green.
Now vivid is a great way to describe a colour that is really strong
and it's bright, it's vivid green.
That's a really great collocation to learn, vivid with a colour.
Must be a bright colour, vivid and vibrant are very, very similar.
Let's talk about some shades of purple.
This is mauve.
So mauve rhymes with stove if you want to practise.
Mauve.
And it's quite a beautiful colour, a light violet or a light purple colour
but it's not quite as light as
lavender.
Can you say it?
It's got three syllables, our stress is on the first syllable
and lavender is a light purple colour. It's a mix between
pale blue and pale red. Now I've mentioned pale a few times
already through this lesson.
It's an adjective that you can use when you want to describe
colours that are softer and lighter and they're less intense
so often it means that they've mixed with white
and become lighter
but pale is another way to describe light.
So that's it. I hope this lesson brightened up your day a little
or at least made it more colourful and now you've got
twenty advanced English colours,
adjectives and other collocations that you can be using
when you're describing the world around you.
In fact, I have a short homework task for you.
I want you to stand up
and walk around, if you're at home, at your office, wherever you are,
see if you can find each one of the colours that we went through
in this lesson. They exist everywhere around us.
Don't forget, I created your colour vocabulary cheat sheet.
It's got all of the collocations
and adjectives we went through today
plus some extra explanations for you.
You can download it from the description box below.
Make sure you subscribe to the channel and check out
this next lesson right here. I'll see you straight in there.