Learn 20 Advanced Colours & Build Your English Vocabulary

Hey there I'm Emma from mmmEnglish.

Today I'll be teaching you how to say twenty advanced colours

in English so you'll get to expand your vocabulary

and learn some more interesting words to use.

We're definitely going to skip over the ones you've already

learned at school: red, green, yellow, blue.

We're going to use some advanced and more

accurate descriptions of colour in this lesson.

You will get to practise your pronunciation, those

tricky consonant clusters and syllable stress and I've also

made all of this available on a handy colour vocabulary

cheat sheet so it's got all of the collocations and

adjectives that I'm going to cover today

plus some extra explanations and examples.

And you can download it

right down in the description box below.

This lesson is definitely going to help you to beautifully

and accurately describe things around you like

clothes, makeup

graphic design, nature, all of these things so

this vocabulary lesson is definitely going to level up your skills.

Make sure you hit that subscribe button

and let's get this rainbow started!

So I'm really excited about this vocabulary lesson because

well I'm not sure maybe some of my regular viewers

have noticed that I've got a green screen going on in my studio

which means I can play around with the colours on screen

and show you what I'm talking about in this lesson.

So I can easily go like this

and like this

and I can show you the colours that I'm talking about.

Now if your brain went: Yep that was white,

that was brown,

that was purple,

you're going to love this lesson because I've got some much

better, much more accurate words to describe the different

shades of colours in English.

Now that is a great collocation to learn.

We use the word shades to talk about different versions

of the same colour.

There are many different shades of yellow

or different shades of green.

And that is exactly how we're going to move through this lesson.

We're going to focus on shades of the same colour.

We'll get started with shades of yellow and brown.

So the first colour is lemon.

So lemon is this pale yellow colour. It's not quite as intense as

yellow. In fact, this colour is often referred to as canary yellow

so see the difference already? We've got two shades of yellow

but there's so much difference between them.

This is lemon yellow and you'll notice that many of these

words actually reference the world around us,

maybe food, flowers, nature

so watch out for these extra words throughout the lesson.

These colours

that remind us of something else in nature.

So this is lemon yellow.

Now this is

mustard.

It's a muted, darker yellow colour, isn't it?

Quite fashionable.

So muted means that it's not bright or shiny.

You can see that this colour isn't as bright as the lemon colour

or the canary yellow and actually as I'm talking, I'm thinking

that one of the really cool things about colours in English

is that most of the time you can add aY

so we could say mustardy.

The new car they bought was mustardy brown.

So it's really great if you're not quite sure of the colour

or the shades. You could say:

The clouds in the sky were a bluey-grey or a bluish-grey.

These are ways to say that it's sort of that colour,

a little bit of that colour, a hint of that colour

but not completely.

Now this is

tawny.

It's this light brown to orange colour.

Now light is a really great way to describe colours that are not

dark or strong and it's often used when little bits of white

or lots of white is mixed in with the colour so it becomes lighter.

And there are a few different ways to describe this.

Another one will come up later on.

But I want you to keep an eye out or an ear out for these

other adverbs and adjectives that you can use to

change the shade of colours in English.

Next up we've got

bronze.

Now that's a really tricky consonant cluster there,

it's just one syllable, that E is silent, bronze.

So bronze is this metallic brown colour

and the adjective metallic is used to describe something that is

shiny so often the paint on cars has that sparkle, that shine in it.

It's metallic.

And funny enough we use this colour bronze

to describe really tanned skin at the beach.

So if you've ever been to an Italian beach in summer

you will see lots of very bronzed people.

Now we have peach.

Make sure you're really landing that last consonant sound there,

that CH sound.

Exaggerate it if you have to while you're

practising out loud with me.

Peach.

Good.

So peach is a colour and a fruit of course, and it's this

beautiful shade of orange, yellow, white

and a touch of pink.

So technically white is not a colour but it is so useful to know

different ways to describe white because there are so many

like this is pearl white.

And it usually has a bit of a shine or a sparkle in it,

much like an actual pearl so it's that little

rainbowy shine over the top of white.

And pearl is often used to describe the really beautiful white

of a car, not the flat white colour but the one with the little sheen

of colour through it.

Pearl white teeth, very, very white teeth

and often makeup as well uses pearl white or pearl

to describe that beautiful coloured sheen.

Now this one is a little tricky to pronounce.

How do you think this word would be pronounced?

Beige.

So can you hear that sound?

It's not very common in English but you do hear it in words like

measure and vision.

So this word is

beige.

So I would describe beige as a pale, dull brown colour.

It doesn't pop, it doesn't stand out, it's not bright.

Interestingly, you can also use this word as an adjective

to describe someone's personality.

It's definitely not a positive adjective to describe a person like this

because it means that they are dull,

kind of boring, they're a bit beige.

Then we have

cream.

So cream is a mix of a little yellow and white

and of course, it references the cream that we use in cooking

so you can imagine that, right?

A cream that you would add to your pasta or dessert, right?

It's inspired by that colour.

And this is

ivory.

So ivory has a little bit more brown, there's a stronger tint of brown

than cream because cream is white with a little tint of yellow,

this is white with a little tint of brown, right?

So you can see the slight variation here and how useful it is to be

able to describe

colour, shades like this with slightly different variations

to have different words to describe it and be more specific.

So now let's talk about shades of red and orange.

We have

auburn.

It's the same vowel sound in door.

So you can hear it has two syllables

auburn.

And the first one is the stressed one, the second one

reduces to the schwa, auburn.

Auburn is this rich red-brown colour and it is most commonly used

to describe hair.

Do you know anyone or can you think of anyone who has auburn

coloured hair?

So this is

burgundy.

It's a deep red colour with really strong hints of purple and  

deep is a really lovely word to describe a strong dark colour.

It's often used with

dark shades of red, green, blue, even purple,

so we use deep to describe that, like the deep,

dark depths of the ocean. It's that really, really, deep, deep blue.

So we use it with some darker colours to add that extra

extra stronger meaning than just dark.

Let's talk about some beautiful shades of pink now starting with

coral.

So as you can see, this colour is a blend between bright pink

and orange.

You remember me speaking about bright colours earlier right?

We often use bright together with a colour to talk about

one that really pops out so we say bright pink,

bright yellow, bright orange.

Speaking of bright, this is fuchsia.

I love this word.

The spelling makes it really difficult to try and pronounce

right but if you close your eyes

and you just listen to the words that I'm saying, the sounds that I'm

making, it might be a little easier.

Fuchsia.

Fuchsia is this vibrant, pinkish, purple colour

and you can use vibrant to describe a colour that is really strong

and lively, it's sharp, it's intense.

So vibrant, I'm sure you can guess is the opposite

of muted and dull.

Okay so vibrant is very full of life.

Now magenta is also another fabulous shade of pink.

It's quite similar to fuchsia because it's blended with purple,

magenta.

So we've got three syllables there.

Can you hear where the strongest stress is?

Magenta.

It's on that second syllable.

Magenta really is like this hot pink that has this tone of purple in it.

It's really bright and intense

like it might almost be burning your eyeballs a little bit right now,

I hope not.

Let's go through some shades of blue and green now.

Starting with teal.

This is teal.

So it's just one syllable and it's this lovely blue-green colour,

very calming, teal, which is different to

aqua.

So in English, the name for this bluish green colour is aqua

and that colour is very similar to aquamarine

which is this bright greenish-blue colour,

a little different.

Notice how I said bluish-green for aqua

and greenish-blue for aquamarine.

This quite literally is the definition of the difference between

the two of them. They're very similar in colour, tone right,

one is a little more green, the other is a little more blue.

They're similar but not quite the same as

turquoise.

So it's another really tricky one to say

if you're just looking at the word.

Turquoise.

Again, turquoise is a mix between a brilliant blue

and a brilliant green.

Now the adjective brilliant means that it glistens, it shines.

It reminds you of shallow water on a

pristine, tropical beach doesn't it, right?

Just imagine that.

So instead of saying: Look at the stunning blue water.

You could say:

Look at the stunning turquoise water.

Much more impressive.

And then we've got

emerald.

It's this really vivid green.

Now vivid is a great way to describe a colour that is really strong

and it's bright, it's vivid green.

That's a really great collocation to learn, vivid with a colour.

Must be a bright colour, vivid and vibrant are very, very similar.

Let's talk about some shades of purple.

This is mauve.

So mauve rhymes with stove if you want to practise.

Mauve.

And it's quite a beautiful colour, a light violet or a light purple colour

but it's not quite as light as

lavender.

Can you say it?

It's got three syllables, our stress is on the first syllable

and lavender is a light purple colour. It's a mix between

pale blue and pale red. Now I've mentioned pale a few times

already through this lesson.

It's an adjective that you can use when you want to describe

colours that are softer and lighter and they're less intense

so often it means that they've mixed with white

and become lighter

but pale is another way to describe light.

So that's it. I hope this lesson brightened up your day a little

or at least made it more colourful and now you've got

twenty advanced English colours,

adjectives and other collocations that you can be using

when you're describing the world around you.

In fact, I have a short homework task for you.

I want you to stand up

and walk around, if you're at home, at your office, wherever you are,

see if you can find each one of the colours that we went through

in this lesson. They exist everywhere around us.

Don't forget, I created your colour vocabulary cheat sheet.

It's got all of the collocations

and adjectives we went through today

plus some extra explanations for you.

You can download it from the description box below.

Make sure you subscribe to the channel and check out

this next lesson right here. I'll see you straight in there.