Colour is everywhere! Look around you.

How many colours can you see?

Do you know the names of colours in English?

Do you know how to spell the colours properly?

Here is a colour chart to help you with some of the most common colours. The first 7 colours on the wheel are the colours of the rainbow.
* These colours may be slightly different on some computers.

1     red
2     orange
3     yellow
4     green
5     blue
6     indigo
7     violet
8     purple
9     pink
10     silver
11     gold
12     beige
13     brown
14     grey
15     black
16     white

How to use colour in a sentence

There are three different ways to describe the colour of something:

1. My dad’s car is red.
2. The red car is my dad’s.
3. Red is the colour of my dad’s car.

Shades

Colours have different shades. You can have:

dark green

light green

bright green

When you aren’t exactly sure how to describe a colour you can use the suffix “ish”. Native speakers often use “ish” to describe colours! For example, a colour can be:

purplish

reddish

blueish

If you love these colours, you will enjoy learning many more colours in English. There are so many fun ones to learn. Colours are often named after things they remind us of. For example:

shell pink navy blue salmon

Ahmet YILDIRIMOĞLU / ANTALYA

ANADOLU UNİVERSİTESİ “İÖLP”

The expressions a little and a few mean some.

• If a noun is in singular, we use a little

  Example:

  a little money

• If a noun is in plural, we use a few

  Example:

  a few friends

Countable / Uncountable Nouns

In connection with a little / a few people often speak of countable nouns and uncountable nouns.

Countable nouns have a singular and a plural form. In plural, these nouns can be used with a number (that’s why they are called ‘countable nouns’). Countable nouns take a few.

Example:

4 friends – a few friends

Uncountable nouns can only be used in singular. These nouns cannot be used with a number (that’s why they are called ‘uncountable nouns’). Uncountable nouns take a little.

Example:

3 money – a little money

Note: Of course you can count money – but then you would name the currency and say that you have got 3 euro (but not „3 money“).

A Little / A few or Little / Few

It’s a difference if you use a little / a few or little / few. Without the article, the words have a limiting or negative meaning.

• a little = some
  little = hardly any

  Example:

  I need a little money. – I need some money.

  I need little money. – I need hardly any money.

• a few = some
  few = hardly any

  Example:

  A few friends visited me. – Some friends visited me.

  Few friends visited me. – Hardly any friends visited me.

Without the article, little / few sound rather formal. That’s why we don’t use them very often in everyday English. A negative sentence with much / many is more common here.

Example:

I need little money. = I do not need much money.

Few friends visited me. = Not many friends visited me.