Colors in Bahasa Indonesia

Happy Chinese New Year~

For today’s post, I’ve decided to write about colors in Bahasa Indonesia.

Now, some of you might already know some of them, as I sometimes mentioned them when writing other posts. But this one is specifically for colors, so let’s dig into it!

Color in Bahasa Indonesia is warna, with something that has various colors on it is said to be berwarna (not just black and white) or warna-warni (having various colors) and the act of coloring is mewarnai. Below is a list of colors in Bahasa Indonesia, though do note that I won’t be writing down the more specific colors like amethyst or olive or raven.

Black = hitam

Blue = biru

Brown = cokelat (and the fruit/candy chocolate is also called cokelat)

Cream = krem

Gold = emas

Gray/grey = abu-abu (by itself, abu means ash)

Green = hijau

Orange = jingga or oranye (though, as I’ve mentioned before, people are more familiar with ‘orange’ nowadays)

Pink = merah muda (literally ‘light red’, and, same with orange, people commonly uses the word ‘pink’ as it’s shorter)

Purple = ungu

Red = merah

Silver = perak

Indigo = nila (no one uses this anymore other than to remember the colors of the rainbow, though, and nowadays the word is more closely associated with the fish Nile Tilapia or ikan nila in Bahasa Indonesia)

White = putih

Yellow = kuning

Picture: various shades of blue in Bahasa Indonesia

If you want to say a darker or lighter shade, simply add ‘tua’ (darker) or ‘muda’ (lighter) after the color. So for example, navy is darker than just blue, right? So we call it biru tua (though officially it’s called biru kelasi). On the other hand, sky blue is lighter than just blue, so we call it biru muda. There are also some shades with which we simply put a name on following the primary color’s name, for example biru dongker (zaffre), merah marun (maroon), putih tulang (bone white), and hijau lumut (olive green, though lumut is actually moss whilst olive is zaitun).

There was actually a book published in 1984 with, like, a list of more detailed color names in Bahasa Indonesia. For example, lila is for the color lilac and kerak terusi is for Verdigris. However, none actually use them unless they want to be poetic, so it’s not exactly common knowledge. You can access them here if you’d like to know more: https://repositori.kemdikbud.go.id/1698/1/Daftar%20Istillah%20Warna%20%28%201984%20%29.pdf

Lastly, I want to talk a bit about the rainbow, which we call pelangi. Indonesian children are taught that there are seven colors to the rainbow, abbreviated as mejikuhibiniu (MErah, JIngga, KUning, HIjau, BIru, NIla, Ungu, or red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and purple). It’s quite a good way, if I say so myself, to make children remember a, relatively, lot of information quickly.

There are also children songs, nursery rhymes if you will, that talks about colors. Pelangi pelangi is one, and it goes like this:

Pelangi, pelangi, alangkah indahmu

Merah, kuning, hijau, di langit yang biru

Pelukismu agung, siapa gerangan

Pelangi, pelangi, ciptaan Tuhan

[Rainbow, rainbow, how beautiful you are

Red, yellow, green, on the blue sky

Your painter is great, who was he

Rainbow, rainbow, God’s creation]

*The original Bahasa Indonesia lyric has rhymes, but I couldn’t be bothered to translate them beautifully, sorry TT)

Another song uses balloons to teach not only colors but also basic math and caution, and it goes like this (again, the translation isn’t rhymed):

Balonku ada lima

Rupa-rupa warnanya

Hijau, kuning, kelabu

Merah muda dan biru

Meletus balon hijau, dor!

Hatiku sangat kacau

Balonku tinggal empat

Kupegang erat-erat

[I have five balloons

Their colors are various

Green, yellow, grey

Pink and blue

The green balloon pops, bang!

My heart is frantic

I only have four balloons left

I hold them tightly]

If you want to listen to the songs, just search them on Youtube^^

I hope you learn something new! Thanks for reading~