Hallo und Grüße aus Berlin! Learning colors is one of the first steps on the road to learning German and I am excited to share this journey with you. Our first stop is the bunte Stadt Berlin. Look carefully and you will learn more than just color words. You will learn more than a handful of words related to the city. You will also catch a glimpse into life in the capital city, from the gelbe Säcke for Recycling to the braune Schweine who sometimes tear into them.
Farben are all around us, but they are also a unique part of each city’s landscape. Most cities don’t have large rosa pipes running through them, but most cities aren’t built on a swamp. Berlin is constantly under construction, being repaired, renewed and rebuilt but all that Wasser has to go somewhere. Enter the rosa Röhren.
The best thing about learning deutsche Farben is that most of them are cognates. Äh. Make that all of them.
Sure, blau und braun are pretty obvious. You probably only need to be told once that weiß is white and grün ist green. But what about schwarz? and gelb? They don’t seem much like Englisch.
But if you pick up an old romance novel, the hero quite likely will be described as having swarthy skin. That means he is dark-complected. And while swarthy isn’t quite schwarz, it does share a history. In fact, it is also related to another word that brings to mind a different kind of darkness — sordid.
And gelb? It feels like the one lonely color without an English sibling. Except where we see a y in English, we often find a g in German: yarn = Garn, yield = gelten, yellow = gelb.
As you watch the video, listen for the color words and enjoy the tour of Berlin. Then come back and practice your new vocabulary with an interactive exercise to help you learn the vocabulary in the video.
Berlin is a vibrant city, bunt and full of Leben. Which images were your favorite? For me, it is the orange Currywurst. It is only missing a side of Pommes rot-weiß. That would be fries with ketchup (rot) and mayo (weiß).
For the following activity, read the question carefully. Try to recall the color and then click the card to see if you are right. It will give you an answer in a complete sentence so you can practice. There is one card for each slide in the video so you can take a closer look at the images.
I hope you enjoyed our Tour durch Berlin and took some time to look around. Next up is the ABCs of a country roughly half the size of Berlin: Liechtenstein. In the meantime, keep practicing your German colors and German numbers!
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