Learn Colours in Italian - and greetings for Christmas, New Year, birthday and anniversary

English
Red
orange
yellow
green
blue
purple
pink
brown
black
white



Italian
Rosso
arancia
giallo (young like yellow, ends with lo, but g, another letter with a hanging tail, instead of y)
verde
blu (Just drop the e)
viola (violet, well, close enough, but the Italians are so musical they say vila instead of violet)
rosa
Marrone
nero (as in Caffe Nero, black coffee)
bianca



English
Good morning (or good day)
Good afternoon
Good evening
Hello
goodbye



Italian
Buongiorno (giorna is like our word journal, a daily account or diary)
Buon pomeriggio
Buonasera
ciao
addio



English
Happy Christmas
Happy New Year
Happy Birthday
Happy Anniversary

Thank you

You're welcome/my pleasure/don't mention it



Italian
Buon Natale
Felice anno nuovo (Felicie is like the English word felicitations and the girl's name Felicity, nuovo is like the English words new and novelty)
Buon compleanno (sounds like a completed year)
Felice anniversario

Grazie

Prego

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. teacher of English and other languages. Workshops in business English and languages for colleges and workplaces. contact me through Facebook or LinkedIn.

Learn colours in Chinese and Malay, alphabetically with memory aids

Memrise helps you to remember, recording your own memory aids.

The Malay words are easiest

The Chinese words add the picture symbol and spoken word for colour to most colours except orange and pink.
If you want to learn or draw the colours, the easiest to recognize are white and another.
Go to Google translate to hear the sounds.


Here are the flag colours
red
white
yellow
color
star

Here are the colours in alphabetical order

black
blue
green

orange
pink

purple
red
white
yellow

In Malay, red as in the station in Singapore in Malay bukit merah, red hill, has the letters re in red and er in merah.
White has the letters h add i and so does Putih. A dead white body going putrid is putih.
Warna is a warm colour, means colour, or think of it as warning colours, like the red yellow and green of traffic lights. Warna, colour.

Oren sounds like orange.

Merah jamu is red jumbled up with whites and reds and pinks to make pink.

But shorter. Malay is an economical language.

Yellow has the letter g, growing cunningly hidden underground. kuning. But in spring it is coming up.

Bing tang is a star on the flag. You will remember all the stars on the flags if you have been to the USA or Malaysia (or China or Singapore). Bintang, Malay language, just think of the Malay language.

Hitam, hit them with the black flag. The black flag was used by pirates. It is used in racing to summon racing cars to the pit for a pit stop. The black flag is the opposite of the white surrender flag and means we will fight on for many groups.

On a brighter note, hit them with the smart black suit, and hiring the black suit hits your pocket.

Biram - I am so blue, no beer nor wine in Malaysia, a dry country, beer makes me blue as I am not a beer drinker but am a wine drinker.

The Malay word for purple, ungu, has the letter u in the English and the rich word for purple, the old royal colour, is ungu with the letter u and g as in king.

If you want to record your own memory aids of mine use Memrise, a free language learning ad which uses and records your memory aids which you can share.


Chinese Colours
Most of the Chinese words for colours have the symbol for solour. It looks like say, phonetically, by sound.

Useful Websites
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_flags

English

Malay

merah
putih
kuning
warna
bintang


hitam
biru
hijau

oren
merah jambu

ungu
merah
putih
kuning

Chinese (Simplified)

红色
白色
黄色
颜色
星


黑色
蓝色
绿色

橙子
粉

紫色
红色
白色
黄色

Hóngsè
báisè
huángsè
yánsè
xīng


hēisè
lán sè
lǜsè

chéngzi
fěn

zǐsè
hóngsè
báisè
huángsè

Useful Websites


LANGUAGES


google translate


translate.google.com


duolingo


duolingo.com


memrise
https://www.memrise.com/



memrise.com




TRAVEL


Singapore Airlines


singaporeair.com




About the Author


Angela Lansbury is a teacher of English and other languages.

Halloween Food and Fun Symbols And Colours in Singapore

Problem
Cold Storage magazine in Singapore provides suggestions for Halloween sweets. In the UK Waitrose and Tesco and other supermarkets have lots of offers on the shelves and in the magazines or on their websites.

How do you provide Halloween food and still eat healthily?

Answer
At Bukit Timah Toastmasters club, Jonathan always provides healthy food, fruit and nuts, which outnumber the bread and biscuits and cakes.

For Halloween he provided:

Bananas
Bananas were cut in half with chocolate buttons added. Three dark chocolate buttons made two dark eyes and a mouth. The bananas looked like ghosts.

Dragon Fruit
Purple dragon fruit with black seeds looked very unusual and ghoulish, almost bloody.
 I asked a member, "Is the purple colour natural?"
He replied, "Yes, dragon fruit can be white or purple. The purples ones are more expensive."

Orange citrus fruit

Decorated Hard-Boiled Eggs
The hard-boiled eggs were cut in half. Each half of the eggs was decorated with strips of beetroot and 'eyes'.

Two eyes in the white. An almond was on the tummy.  The eggs looked like little ghosts.

Watermelon Trees

Nuts
Almonds and walnuts were provided in tubs.

We were all asked to wear black.

UK Themed Food & Decorations from Tesco
Last year in the UK for a Halloween theme meeting at a club I bought chocolate cakes and biscuits and paper decorations from my local Tescos and other supermarkets.

The items are cheaper the day after Halloween.

DIY
Now I realise that with a little ingenuity, you can make healthy DIY snacks on a Halloween theme. Halloween in October 31. You still have time to plan a party.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

How To Remember Portuguese Colours Easily

Problem
How do I remember the colours? Rosa is pink, not red. Preto is black, no relation to any other word.

Answers
Portuguese - English
amarelo - yellow - both end with the sound 'ello'; both have e and letter l and o in the spelling but not that the Portuguese has only one l
descolore - (she) bleaches (discolours, de-colours)
col - colour (like an abbreviation of colour, just the first three letters)
colorido - colourful (coloured)
cores - colours
morena - brunette (a for the female gender)
moreno - dark hair (on a man o for the male gender)
preto - black (pull the p upright, day to night, p to B, t is an upright letter like t, last letter o as in negro - tinto negro, the red grape of Madeira, name of grape, black or red grape for red wine)
rosa - pink (think of rosy cheeks)
roxa - purple (red and extra blue makes purple)

English - Portuguese
bleaches - descolore
brunette - morena
colour - col
colourful - colorido (coloured)
pink - rosa
purple - roxa (red and extra blue makes purple)
yellow - amarelo
white - branco (like white branches, blanc)

Portuguese - English nouns
relogio - watch or clock (think of a Rolex)
roupas - clothes (robes, what you keep in wardrobes)
sandálias - sandals (accent going up and forward on the second a in Portuguese; add an i to sandals in Portuguese - the Portuguese are eyeing your sandals)
vestido - dress (not just a vest but a complete outfit, like a priest's vestments); vest like vest but more than a vest, d as in dress

English - Portuguese nouns
clothes - roupas
dress - vestido
sandals - sandálias
watch - relogio

Colourful seating. Contrasting colors

I saw these lovely seat colours in an office which I visited in Singapore to give an English language evaluation for speeches. What delightful uplifting colors.

The colours are purple, yellow and royal blue. Not a colour combination I would have thought of. 

The colours divide up the seating so you can select a space and not overlap into anybody else's space.  

Could that yellow, pale colour, ever get stained or dirty or faded? I bet it's treated with stain repellent. 

If anything goes wrong, maybe the cushions are reversible. Maybe you can order spares, just of the odd cushions, not the entire sequence of seats. Alternatively, keep spare cushions in their wrapper in case the company changes the colours or lines or goes out of business. 

However, fashions change. A new decorating department may wish to make improvements. The office will probably change the seating style and redecorate before the suppliers go out of business. For now, it looks lovely. 

The backs give support, but are low enough to allow a picture window view.

The port, I was told, will eventually be moved. Then what? Maybe a marina or something pretty. Singapore does not allow derelict sites spoiling the garden city.

Even on business, without visiting a single tourist site, you get an impression of the landscape and modern development and the philosophy of the country of Singapore.

Useful Websites

singaporeair.com

visitsingapore.com

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Learn Your First Ten Words in Portuguese: Colours (start a monthly learn a language plan)

Problem
I need to learn Portuguese for my next holiday. Portuguese is used in Brazil and Madeira. What should I learn?

Answers
On Tinycards by Duolingo I can learn colours and foods. That takes time every day.

Some of the questions are annoying. You seem to get asked to guess a colour before you've been told it. One reason is that it's really a revision card for what you have already learned on Duolingo.

What has gone wrong? You might have rushed on to the test question, forgetting previously to click to reverse the card to see the translation.

I'm short of time so I'm typing into Google translate my favourite words in the order I want to learn them. I then order the words from Portuguese into English, followed by English into Portuguese.

Any popular phrase book does the same thing. You can pick groups of words to learn, sometimes at the start or end of the book, such as numbers, days of the week. If I were to learn 10 words a day, and keep adding, in a month of 28-31 days I would have a basic vocabulary of 280-310 words.

Which words will I need most? I can select 28-31 sets of words. Let's make it 30 for neatness, and add another 10 or do a revision on day 31. If I am busy one day, my cumulative list will help me catch up. Add one to three whole sentences.

Earworms by Berlitz does something similar. You can play it in your car to help you learn words for your next holiday.

1 Colours
2 Food
3 Wine bottle labels
4 Days of the week
5 Months
6 Numbers 1-10
7 Travel brochure /website
8 On the plane
9 At the airport
10 On a ferry or boat
11 On a bus
12 Walking
13 At the hotel
14 In a restaurant
15 On a tour
16 Shops and prices
17 Speaking to a museum guide
18 Emergency
19 Verbs - to be (present), to be future, walk, run, stop, go, like, can,
20 Recipes
21 Clothes labels / washing instructions
22 Sewing and repairs
23 Pharmacy and doctor
24 Police and theft
25 Driving and traffic signs
26 Greetings and meetings
27 Time
28 Numbers 10-20
29 Celebrations
30 Weddings: bride, groom, photographer
31 Feelings: happy, sad, hungry, full, angry, worried, busy, tired, keen, need, want
Question words: where, how much, how many

Once I have worked out the words I need, I can use the same set of English words to learn any other language. Obviously the words you need on a ski holiday are different to those on a beach holiday.

This would keep me organized.  However, if I want to learn out of sequence, such as doing colours today, I need to re-structure my list, or create a draft of all 30 days of learning.

Here are colours:

English - Portuguese
black - preto (p and b are like upside down or each other; pret-end to be invisible wearing black)
brown - castanho (like a brown castle)
blue - azul
green - verde (like the Italian verdi but the I-tal-I-an has i and Portugu-E-s-E has E) vinho verde green wine
orange - laranja (like the Spanish naranja but L shape Portugal which is long has laranja)
pink - rosa (rose pink)
purple - roxa (r in purple)
red - vermelho (like vermilion)
white - branco (like blanco but with an r as in PoRtuguese)
yellow - amarelo (the endings rhyme; spelling like the town Amarillo simplified, imagine yEllow amarillo - amarElo)

O and A endings
Five of the words end with the letter O, (preto, castanho, vermelho, branco, amarelo).
Three Portuguese colour words end with the letter a: laranja, rosa, roxa.
One word ends with e, verde.
One ends with l, azul.
...
grey
striped
patterned
plain
bright colour
darker
lighter
navy
lovely colour
to match this colour

Portuguese
Preto
Castanho
azul - azul
verde
laranja
Rosa
roxa
vermelho
branco
amarelo
...
cinzento
listrado
padronizado
avião
Cor brilhante (cor rhymes with more, but cor short for colour, brilhante like the English word brilliant)
mais escura (mais is more, escura obscured - darker)
isqueiro
marinha
linda cor (Linda is wearing a lovely colour - cor blimey, that's a lovely colour, Linda)
para combinar com esta cor (to combine with this colour - for combining with this colour).

Five of this second set of letters end with o: cinzento, listrado, padronizado, avião, isqueiro. Three end with a: escura, marinha, linda.

Now you can write to your friends called Linda and tell them they are lovely - in Spanish and Portuguese.

http://duolingo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language
https://translate.google.com/

https://www.visitportugal.com/en/destinos/madeira
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/madeira-wine-two-hundred-year-old-found-fortified-cellar-new-jersey-liberty-hall-union-a7835881.html
http://www.kean.edu/libertyhall/about/history

duolingo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira

http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/port-and-portuguese-wine-labels-and.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/how-to-ask-for-food-and-drink-in.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/learn-your-first-ten-words-in.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/how-do-you-say-please-in-portuguese-is.

visitportugal.com

visitbrasil.com

http://www.visitmadeira.pt/en-gb/homepage

earwormslearning.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English, learner of 12 other languages.
Please see my other travel blog:
http://www.luxurytravelforless.co.uk