Color Vocabulary
Just how important is it to know color vocabulary? If you’re trying to find David’s house, it’s good to know that la maison de David est bleue, David’s house is blue. If the dress you ordered online is the wrong color, you need to be able to tell customer service, Quelle horreur! Je voulais la robe rouge, pas la robe marron! Oh, no! I wanted the red dress, not the brown dress!
Besides being able to describe things to other people, asking a new friend about their favorite color can be a good ice-breaker.
First, let’s review some question basics. In the last lesson, you learned how to form questions and some of the most important question words. Review the flip boxes below to see if you remember French interrogative pronouns.
Qui
Who
Que
What
Quand
When
Où
Where
Pourquoi
Why
Comment
How
Combien
How many
Second, let’s review question formation from the previous lesson. There are three ways to form a question in French. Look at the table below to review all three forms.
| Formation | Explanation |
|---|---|
|
In spoken French, you just raise your intonation towards the end of the sentence, and in written French, you add a question mark. Par exemple: Tu aimes la couleur bleue? You like the color blue? |
|
|
Est-ce que goes in front of a statement to turn it into a question. It’s like the upside down question mark Spanish uses before questions: it warns you that a question is coming. Par exemple: Est-ce que tu aimes le livre vert? Do you like the green book? |
|
|
In inversion, you invert, or switch, the subject pronoun and the verb and join them with a hyphen. Par exemple: Aimes-tu le chien noir et blanc? Do you like the black and white dog? |
If you want to ask your new friend what their favorite color is in French, you’ll ask:
Quelle est ta couleur préférée?
What is your
favorite color?
Quel means what in French, but it’s better translated as which in English. When asking someone to make a choice between two or more things, you use quel.
Quel film préfères-tu?
Which movie do you
prefer?
Quel agrees in gender and number with the noun it modifies, but the sound remains the same.
| Masculine | Feminine | |
|---|---|---|
| Singular | quel | quelle |
| Plural | quels | quelles |
So the question Quelle est ta couleur préférée? can also be translated as Which is your favorite color?
To answer the question, you’ll respond with:
Ma couleur
préférée est…
| Quelle est ta couleur préférée? | What’s your favorite color? |
| Ma couleur préférée est rouge. | My favorite color is red. |
You can also use quel to ask the color of an object.
What color is…?
| De quelle couleur est ton chien? | What color is your dog? |
| Mon chien est marron. | My dog is brown. |
The title of this page is Allez les Bleus which means Go, Blues. It’s a reference to the French national football (soccer) team. When there’s a match, you’ll probably hear this phrase chanted from café terraces and other gathering places: Allez les Bleus!
