Colours in Turkish

We will learn the names of different colours in Turkish, including shades of colours. In Turkish, colours can be converted into different colours by adding suffix at the end of the colour stem. For example; colour/ımsı (Note! The suffix follows the vowel harmony imsi/ımsı. 'Yeşil' is green. When the suffix '-imsi' added to the stem, the colour converts into greenish, different shade of green.

The suffix is not always at the end of the stem. Reduplication form doesn't follow the rule. For example; yeşil / yemyeşil  Yeşil is green and when prefix added front of the stem, the colour is transformed into another type of green.

• Main colours (black, white, red etc.)
• ColourISH (greyish, reddish, bluish etc.)
• Value of colours (dark, light, etc.)
• Reduplication (scarlet, livid, snowy)

Turkish colors

In order to ask the question for colours, it is constructed similar way in English.

(elma: apple ne:what renk: colour)

The answer is also simple.

However, note the difference in the word ordering. Colours can be a noun or an adjective according to the position in a sentence.

 Not ´Bir kırmızı elma´ 

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Turkish colour palette 

Tones of colours

The suffix -(i)mtrak is used to produce adjectives for quality of the colour.

 This suffix always retains the form -mtrak and does not follow the vowel harmony rules.

The suffix -(i)msi is also used to produce adjectives for quality of the colour.

This suffix follows vowel harmony rules.

Reduplicated colours 

It does not follow any vowel harmony rules. In order to construct a reduplicated form of a color, first syllable of the color is taken and one of those consonants p, m, s, r attached at the end of the syllable. The new syllable, which is formed by taking one of the consonants of the word p, m, s, r is added to begining of the color. Example table below will help you to understand better.

Summary:

On this page we learned about Turkish colours, colour tones and reduplicated colours with audio supported examples. Doing exercises will be helpful to understand better.