Colours and articles

[franc 91]

I'd like some help please.
I am currently creating a set of colour dominoes for the children of some Romanian friends of mine. In the Romanian children's picture vocabulary book I've just found, where the colours are named (and not used as adjectives) systematically they are given with the definite article included - ie it's negrul and not negru, verdele instead of verde and so on. Is this correct or not? This is definitely not made clear in any of the on-line language-learning sites that I've looked at. I can give you the ISBN number if you like.

 

[farscape]

The simplest and fastest way to explain it :

The (colour) yellow used by Van Gogh -> Galbenul (culoarea galbenă) folosit/ă de Van Gogh

The red tile goes with the green tile and the blue one with the yellow one. -> Piesa roșie merge cu piesa verde și cea albastră cu cea galbenă.

Now simplifying to create confusion

Red goes with green and blue with yellow -> Roșul merge cu verdele iar albastrul cu galbenul, but in common speech you could hear "roșu merge cu verde și albastru cu galben"

În conclusion, în Romanian we would use the articulated form of the noun to refer to the colour: the colour red, meaning culoarea roșie or Roșul.

The colour black -> culoarea neagră or Negrul.

Most of the time when used as adjectives, the name of the colours are not articulated (black tiles - piese negre).

Hope this clears things a bit. If you can and like to study dictionaries you should give dexonline.ro a try.

 

[franc 91]

Thank you very much. I was beginning suspect this, but on the various dictionary websites that I've looked at (French/Romanian), very often they give the colour (in French), used in the context of a sentence, with the definite article whereas in the Romanian version it's not there. It was only when I looked at this children's book, that I saw the colours being 'announced' in this particular way. That's why I was confused about it.
(ISBN 978 1 7246 1049 2)

 

[farscape]

The context plays a big role and sometimes it's not easy to distinguish between the cases where articulated forms of the noun are needed, adjectives and noun forms where the article can miss: the best example I can give here is Stendhals' "Le Rouge et le Noir": the novel's title in English is similar, "The red and the black" however, the standard Romanian translation is Roşu şi Negru.

Using the article can bring emphasis and attention to the subject: Albul mută şi dă şah -> White moves and announces/gives check. In fact it would sound bad to say Alb mută şi dă şah. However in this case, although I'm referring to the noun, I don't think it absolutely needs the article: Roşu(l) este culoarea dragostei aprinse -> Red is the colour of passionate love.

 

[franc 91]

I have something further to ask. When the colour is 'Black and White' shown together, how do I express that ? - Negru-Alb or Negrul-Albul ? (second topic moved to a separate thread by the moderator)

 

[farscape]

The non-articulated form is preferred, Alb - Negru in this case. The second part is a topic in itself and should be treated as such (meaning it needs its own thread).