Colours in Welsh

In Brief

Welsh colour adjectives normally come after the noun: car coch means “a red car.” After a feminine singular noun, a colour beginning with a consonant that can undergo soft mutation usually changes its first sound: cath ddu means “a black cat,” from du. Learn the basic colour and its common mutated form together.

Overview

Welsh colour words are usually adjectives (words that describe a person or thing). Unlike English adjectives, they normally follow the noun (the word naming that person or thing): English says “a green door,” but Welsh says drws gwyrdd, literally “door green.” Welsh has no indefinite article corresponding to English “a” or “an,” so context supplies it.

Colours are introduced at A1 because they let you describe clothes, vehicles, animals and everyday objects immediately. They also give you useful early practice with Welsh grammatical gender and mutation. A noun is grammatically masculine or feminine, and a feminine singular noun normally triggers soft mutation in a following adjective. “Soft mutation” means that the first consonant changes according to a regular Welsh pattern; it does not mean that the whole word changes.

The beginner rule is straightforward: put the colour after the noun, and mutate it after a feminine singular noun when possible. Later, you will also meet colour adjectives after yn, occasional plural adjective forms and more detailed choices between colour terms. Those points are separated below so that you can use the core pattern first.

How It Works

1. Put the colour after the noun

The normal pattern is:

noun + colour adjective

• car coch — a red car
• drws gwyrdd — a green door
• blodau melyn — yellow flowers
• crys glas — a blue shirt

This order is the reverse of ordinary English “colour + noun” order. Do not move the colour in front simply because that feels natural in English.

The definite article y/yr/'r (“the”) comes before the complete noun phrase:

• y car coch — the red car
• y drws gwyrdd — the green door
• yr afal gwyrdd — the green apple

2. Learn a practical core set

Welsh	English	Common soft-mutated form
coch	red	goch
glas	blue	las
gwyrdd	green	wyrdd
du	black	ddu
gwyn	white	wyn
melyn	yellow	felyn
llwyd	grey	lwyd
oren	orange	unchanged
porffor	purple	borffor
pinc	pink	binc
brown	brown	frown

Some Welsh colour words resemble English, but Welsh pronunciation and mutation rules still apply. In particular, spelling a borrowed colour is not a reason to put it before the noun.

3. Mutate after a feminine singular noun

Welsh nouns have grammatical gender. This is a grammatical category, not a statement about the object itself: a table or a shirt can have grammatical gender even though it is not biologically male or female.

When a colour adjective follows a feminine singular noun, its initial consonant normally undergoes soft mutation:

Basic phrase	With a feminine noun	What changed?
du — black	cath ddu — a black cat	d → dd
coch — red	ffrog goch — a red dress	c → g
gwyn — white	cadair wen — a white chair	g disappears; gwyn also has the feminine form gwen before mutation
melyn — yellow	pêl felen — a yellow ball	m → f; feminine melen
glas — blue	cadair las — a blue chair	g disappears
llwyd — grey	cath lwyd — a grey cat	ll → l

The forms gwyn/gwen and melyn/melen show more than an initial mutation: these adjectives have traditional masculine and feminine singular forms. In everyday learning, it is useful to memorise the complete phrases cadair wen and pêl felen, rather than trying to derive every change in several mental steps.

Compare a masculine and feminine noun directly:

• ci du — a black dog; ci is masculine, so du stays unchanged.
• cath ddu — a black cat; cath is feminine, so du becomes ddu.
• car coch — a red car; car is masculine.
• ffrog goch — a red dress; ffrog is feminine.

Not every colour has an initial consonant that changes. A word beginning with a vowel, such as oren, remains visibly unchanged: sgert oren (“an orange skirt”). Lack of a visible change does not alter the word order or the noun’s gender.

4. Watch the article and the adjective separately

With a feminine singular noun, the definite article can also cause soft mutation of the noun. The adjective may then mutate because it follows that feminine singular noun:

• cath ddu — a black cat
• y gath ddu — the black cat

In y gath ddu, cath becomes gath after the article, while du becomes ddu after the feminine noun. These are two related but separate mutation points. Do not let the first change distract you from the adjective.

5. Describing something with “is”

To say that something is a colour, Welsh commonly uses mae plus yn:

mae + subject + yn + colour

The particle yn links the subject to its description. Before an adjective, it normally causes soft mutation:

• Mae'r car yn goch. — The car is red.
• Mae'r drws yn wyrdd. — The door is green.
• Mae'r gath yn ddu. — The cat is black.
• Mae'r crys yn las. — The shirt is blue.

This mutation is caused by yn, not by the gender of the subject. That is why masculine car still appears with goch in Mae'r car yn goch. Compare car coch (“a red car”), where the adjective directly follows the masculine noun and therefore remains coch. Predicative yn has a narrower mutation pattern than some other soft-mutation environments: words beginning with ll or rh normally keep those initials after it.

In normal writing, mae yr contracts to mae'r, and mae ... yn is often written with an apostrophe as mae ... 'n after a word ending in a vowel: Mae'r car yn goch and Mae hi'n goch follow the same construction.

Examples in Context

Welsh	English	Note
Mae gen i gar coch.	I have a red car.	Masculine car: no adjective mutation
Mae'r gath ddu yn cysgu.	The black cat is sleeping.	Feminine cath: du → ddu
Agorwch y drws gwyrdd.	Open the green door.	Colour follows drws
Mae blodau melyn yn yr ardd.	There are yellow flowers in the garden.	A basic plural noun phrase
Dw i'n gwisgo crys glas.	I am wearing a blue shirt.	Masculine crys: glas stays unchanged
Mae hi'n prynu ffrog goch.	She is buying a red dress.	Feminine ffrog: coch → goch
Mae'r ci gwyn yn y parc.	The white dog is in the park.	Masculine ci: gwyn
Mae cadair wen wrth y ffenestr.	There is a white chair by the window.	Feminine cadair: gwyn/gwen → wen
Mae'r car yn ddu.	The car is black.	yn causes du → ddu
Mae'r esgidiau yn frown.	The shoes are brown.	yn causes brown → frown
Prynodd e het lwyd.	He bought a grey hat.	Feminine het: llwyd → lwyd
Mae'r afalau'n wyrdd.	The apples are green.	Contracted yn before the colour
Dw i eisiau pêl felen.	I want a yellow ball.	Feminine pêl: melyn/melen → felen
Mae'r wal yn borffor.	The wall is purple.	Predicative yn: porffor → borffor

Common Mistakes

Putting the colour before the noun

• Wrong: coch car
• Right: car coch
• Why: Welsh colour adjectives normally follow the noun. English word order does not carry over.

Forgetting mutation after a feminine singular noun

• Wrong: cath du
• Right: cath ddu
• Why: Cath is feminine singular, so a following adjective beginning with d undergoes soft mutation.

Mutating after every noun

• Wrong: ci ddu
• Right: ci du
• Why: Ci is masculine. Directly after this noun, du remains unchanged. Mutation is triggered by a grammatical environment, not merely by the fact that the word is an adjective.

Leaving the adjective unchanged after predicative yn

• Wrong: Mae'r car yn coch.
• Right: Mae'r car yn goch.
• Why: In the construction “the car is red,” yn introduces the description and causes soft mutation. The masculine gender of car does not block this mutation.

Treating every mutation as a gender clue

• Misleading conclusion: “Mae'r ci yn ddu, so ci must be feminine.”
• Correct reading: Ci is masculine; ddu is mutated because it follows yn.
• Why: The same surface form can result from different triggers. Check the sentence structure before using mutation to infer gender.

Translating English “a” with y

• Wrong: y car coch for “a red car”
• Right: car coch
• Why: Welsh has no indefinite article. Y/yr/'r means “the,” so y car coch means “the red car.”

Usage Notes

Welsh colour vocabulary varies somewhat by region and speaker, especially for shades and borrowed words. You may hear familiar-looking forms such as pinc and brown alongside other descriptive expressions. The essential grammar remains the same: these words normally follow the noun and participate in Welsh mutation where their initial consonant allows it.

For shades, a colour can be followed by another adjective: glas golau (“light blue”) and gwyrdd tywyll (“dark green”). Think of the second word as refining the colour. In natural speech, exact colour boundaries do not always match English perfectly, so context and the object being described matter more than a one-to-one dictionary label.

When you ask about colour, a useful phrase is Pa liw? (“What colour?”). Lliw means “colour,” and it appears as liw after pa: Pa liw ydy'r car? (“What colour is the car?”). A natural answer is Mae'n goch (“It is red”), with mutation after yn.

Beyond the Basics: Number and Traditional Forms

You do not need to master this section at A1, but it explains forms you will encounter later. Welsh adjectives do not operate exactly like English adjectives, and some common adjectives have distinct plural forms. Colour plurals include forms such as duon, gwynion, cochion, melynion and gleision (from glas). They occur in established expressions and in more formal or literary language; usage varies by adjective and context.

You may therefore meet both the simple adjective forms taught in beginner material and phrases such as:

• defaid duon — black sheep
• llygaid gleision — blue eyes
• cymylau gwynion — white clouds

Do not create a plural adjective mechanically every time the noun is plural. The concept data’s blodau melyn is a valid and useful beginner pattern. Learn plural adjective forms when you meet them in reliable phrases, and notice what speakers use rather than assuming a single universal ending.

A few colour adjectives also preserve gender-related stem forms, most visibly gwyn with feminine gwen and melyn with feminine melen. Mutation then produces wen and felen after a feminine noun. This layering is why whole phrase pairs are so valuable:

• ci gwyn — a white dog
• cadair wen — a white chair
• blodyn melyn — a yellow flower
• pêl felen — a yellow ball

Finally, colours can be discussed as labels or categories rather than used directly as descriptions. In ordinary beginner conversation, however, noun phrases such as crys glas and sentences such as Mae'r crys yn las are the most productive patterns to practise.

Practice Tips

1. Learn contrastive pairs. Put one masculine and one feminine noun on each card: ci du / cath ddu, car coch / ffrog goch. This ties mutation to gender instead of teaching it as an isolated spelling trick.
2. Practise two sentence frames for each colour. Say car coch and then Mae'r car yn goch. The contrast helps you distinguish mutation after a feminine noun from mutation caused by yn.
3. Describe real objects around you. Choose five items, check each noun’s gender, and make both an indefinite phrase and a full sentence. For example: crys glas; Mae'r crys yn las. Say the phrases aloud so that mutation becomes a sound pattern, not only a written rule.

Related Concepts

• Prerequisite: Basic Adjectives — introduces normal adjective position and the feminine singular mutation pattern.
• Foundation: Gender of Nouns — helps you know when a directly following colour adjective should mutate.