Learning the colours in Welsh. From black to yellow. And sing a rainbow song.

Problem
How do you learn the colours in Welsh?
Supposing you want to buy a red dress?
What do the words sound like in Welsh?

Answer
Look the words up in google translate. Learn with Duolingo. The easiest words are those which are exactly the same to read. Brown. Turquoise. Same in Welsh and English. Duo lingo includes a symbol for sound you can tap on to hear the words. I read through the forums and eventually I found the answer to my question. the sounds on Duolingo are computer generated. It would take too long and be too complicated to record every word.

If you want to hear languages spoken by native speakers, try YouTube. If you want to learn whole sentences in the spoken language, learn from courses which are mainly or partly on discs. The easiest and quickest is Earworms which is a sub section of Berlitz.

Story
I was looking through Duolingo, the free website. They make you stick to the system of lessons in order. They are quite right too. Otherwise I would skip to the end and never complete the course, lose track of what I'd missed.

However, I could not resist reading through the headlines in the middle of the red buttons. I spotted colours, the lesson which would be most appealing to me. Colours is the one I could practise most - every time I saw anything coloured I could keep repeating the Welsh.

You Tube Welsh Colours Video
When I googled 'colours Welsh' I immediately and unexpectedly found this handy video. I wish the children would smile. The colours are not very clear. The children seemed to be shaking the cards instead of holding the cards still. Visibility improved when I switched to full screen by clicking the symbol in the lower right.

I decided to write out the colours in my notebook which I always carry in my right hand pocket. The easiest colour to remember is pink, spelt p i n c .

English - Welsh
colour -l l i w
colours - l l i w a u
black - du
blue - g l a s (I think of blue eyes like glass)
brown - brown (looks the same but the r is emphasized)
green - g w y r d d
grey - llwyd
lavender - l a f a n t
orange - o r e n
pink - p i n c
purple - p o r f f o r
red - coch
turquoise - turquoise
white - g w y n
yellow - m e l y n (I think of mellow yellow M E L  Y; also Mel is wearing Yellow and LYN is wearing Yellow, which is M E L Y N in Welsh)

Welsh - English
blue - g l a s
brown - brown
coch - red
du - black
g w y n - white
g w y r d d - green
l a f a n t - lavender (I think of a laughing ant on the lavender plant)
m e l y n - yellow
o r e n - orange
p i n c - pink
p o r f f o r - purple
turquoise - turquoise

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, teacher, tutor, workshop leader and speaker about English and learning foreign languages. See my other posts on destinations and languages such as French, German, Italian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Russian, Welsh. Please share links to your favourite posts.