Nuria draws a rainbow (A1)
Nuria cannot finish her rainbow without the purple pencil. She finds it on the floor: red goes on top and purple at the bottom.
Dibujar con colores
Tap any word to see its translation
. , . . , . , . . . . .
, . , , . , . . , . : . , . , . , .
, . : . . . . . . , , . . .
Keep reading with translations
Create a free account: 7 days of Pro, then 20 word translations a day or a paid plan.
About this article
What you'll learn
Present tense, color names, and where naranja, morado, and rosa get their names.
Nuria wants to draw a rainbow, but the purple pencil is not in the box. Her mother finds it on the floor by the chair. Nuria puts red at the top and purple at the bottom, as in a rainbow after rain, with orange, yellow, green, and blue in between. Naranja takes its name from the fruit, morado from the mora, and rosa from the flower. She also draws a yellow sun and red flowers. The picture ends on her bedroom wall.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
Cojo una hoja de papel blanco
newI take a sheet of white paper
Coger means to take or pick something up with your hand. The yo form swaps the g for a j: coger, cojo, coges, coge.
In Spain coger is used constantly, but in much of Latin America it is a vulgar word, so people say tomar or agarrar instead.
Es mi actividad favorita
newit is my favourite activity
Favorito changes with the noun it describes: mi actividad favorita, mi color favorito, mis libros favoritos.
Spanish puts favorito after the noun, never in front of it as English does.
Tengo una caja de lápices de colores
newI have a box of coloured pencils
One is el lápiz, several are los lápices: the z turns into c before the plural ending -es.
Every Spanish noun in -z makes its plural this way: lápiz, lápices; pez, peces; luz, luces.
me siento a mi mesa
newI sit down at my table
The verb here is sentarse, to sit down. Watch the preposition: sentarse a la mesa is to sit down at the table, while sentarse en la mesa would put you on top of it.
Me siento is also the yo form of sentirse, to feel, which turns up later in the text: me siento muy feliz. Same two words, two different verbs.
empiezo a dibujar
newI start to draw
Empezar a plus an infinitive means to start doing something, and the a is obligatory: empiezo a dibujar, never empiezo dibujar.
Empezar is not regular: the stem e becomes ie in empiezo, empiezas, empieza and empiezan, but not in empezamos.
Mi madre me mira dibujar
newmy mother watches me draw
After verbs of perception Spanish uses a bare infinitive: me mira dibujar, te oigo cantar. English needs an -ing form or a whole clause.
The me is the person being watched, not the one doing the watching.
Me siento muy feliz
newI feel very happy
Here me siento is sentirse, to feel. Sentirse is followed by an adjective: me siento feliz, me siento cansada.
Compare the earlier me siento a mi mesa, which was sentarse. What comes next tells you which verb you have.
se pone rojo
newhe goes red, he blushes
Ponerse plus a colour or an adjective is how Spanish says to turn or to go: se pone rojo, se pone triste, me pongo nerviosa.
Ponerse rojo is the everyday way of saying somebody blushed, and pasar vergüenza is the feeling behind it.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
Dibujar: to draw
dibujar
to draw
A fully regular -ar verb: dibujo, dibujas, dibuja, dibujamos, dibujáis, dibujan. It means drawing with lines; putting colour on is pintar.
The noun is el dibujo, a drawing, and the person who does it is el dibujante.
El color: colour
colores
colours
El color is masculine even though it ends in -or, and its plural is los colores. The colour word comes after: el color rojo, los colores fuertes.
Do not confuse it with la flor, which ends the same way and is feminine.
El arcoíris: rainbow
arcoíris
rainbow
Two words joined into one: arco, an arch, plus iris. The accent on the í keeps the two vowels apart, so it is said ar-co-í-ris.
The plural does not change: un arcoíris, dos arcoíris.
El artista, la artista
artista
artist
Artista keeps the same -a ending for a man and for a woman. Only the words around it show the gender: un buen artista, una buena artista.
Dozens of professions work this way: pianista, dentista, periodista, taxista.
Morado: purple
morado
purple
Morado is named after la mora, the mulberry or blackberry, because of its dark juice. As an adjective it agrees: un lápiz morado, una flor morada.
The colour has its own expression too: pasarlas moradas, to go through a very hard time.
Naranja: orange
naranja
orange (the fruit and the colour)
One word for the fruit and for the colour, just as in English. La naranja is the fruit; el naranja is the colour.
Spanish took the word from Arabic, along with thousands of others that entered the language in those centuries.
Verde: green
verde
green
Verde ends in -e, so it does not change for gender: un lápiz verde, una hoja verde. Only the plural changes: verdes.
Verde also means unripe, and about a person it means somebody who is still a beginner at something.
Azul: blue
azul
blue
Azul has one form for both genders and adds -es in the plural: lápices azules, flores azules. Shades take a second word: azul claro, azul oscuro.
El príncipe azul is the Spanish Prince Charming, the perfect boy of fairy tales.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
Gustar: what pleases whom
me gusta dibujar
I like drawing
Gustar does not mean to like, it means to please, so the thing liked is the subject. One thing: me gusta el azul. Several things: me gustan los colores fuertes. The verb follows the thing, not the person.
The person is a pronoun, and can be named as well: a mi madre le gusta el azul.
Colours agree with the noun
Hay lápices rojos, azules, verdes y amarillos
there are red, blue, green and yellow pencils
Colours ending in -o have four forms: rojo, roja, rojos, rojas. Colours ending in -e or in a consonant have only two: verde and verdes, azul and azules.
That is why one short list shows both patterns: lápices rojos and amarillos, but lápices azules and verdes.
Hay: there is, there are
También hay dos lápices con nombre de fruta
there are also two pencils named after a fruit
Hay never changes: hay un lápiz, hay dos lápices. It says that something exists. To say where a known thing is, Spanish uses estar: el lápiz está en la caja.
Hay takes a number or nothing at all in front of the noun, never el or la: hay lápices, not hay los lápices.
Cuál: which one of them
¿Cuál es tu color favorito?
what is your favourite colour?
Before the verb ser Spanish asks cuál, not qué, when you have to pick one out of many: ¿Cuál es tu color favorito? ¿Cuál es tu nombre? Qué before ser asks for a definition: ¿Qué es un arcoíris?
The question opens with an upside-down ¿, and cuál carries an accent because it is a question word.
Read a book in Spanish
All A1 books
Comments
Log in to leave a comment
LoginNo comments yet. Be the first!