Vocabulary: Colors in Serbian
Boje
Who’s the girl with “blue” hair? Read on to find out more about that and learn all colors in Serbian. On this page you’ll find the words for all shades with typical comparisons, plus hair colors in Serbian. Listen to the native speaker audio recordings and practice pronunciation.
All colors in Serbian and typical comparisons
Comparing things by color belongs to typical expressions. For example, we can say “beo kao sir” (white as cheese). Beo means white – did you know that the name of the Serbian capital Belgrade, or Beograd in Serbian, actually means “The White City”?
beo kao sneg
white as snow
crn kao noć
black as night
siv kao beton
gray as concrete
crven kao krv
red as blood
plav kao nebo
blue as sky
žut kao sunce
yellow as sun
narandžast kao narandža
orange as an orange
ljubičast kao ljubičica
violet as a violet
zelen kao trava
green as grass
braon
smeđ
brown
roze
pink
šaren kao papagaj
multicolored as parrot
by Magdalena Petrovic Jelic
Founder of Serbonika
Serbian language teacher and entrepreneur, language lover and polyglot, but also a mother and a relentless storyteller. Read more about me.
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Test your colors!
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Words to describe colors in Serbian
How we describe different shades of colors:
boja (color)
nijansa (shade)
svetla (light)
tamna (dark)
providna (transparent)
jarka (bright)
prljava (dirty)
čista (clean)
Različite boje kose (Different hair colours)
Who is the “blue” girl? No, she’s not Martian. “Plava devojka” is actually a blond girl. We use the same word plava for blue and blonde.
Plava was originally the word for light colors, the color of the sky. The old word for blue was modra, but we rarely use it today.
Interestingly, the old French word that gave the English term blonde also meant light. Apparently, in the past, people had less interest in defining the nuances of colors.
crna
black
smeđa
brown
svetlosmeđa
light brown
seda
gray hair
crvena
red
riđa
ginger
plava
Attention! The same word is used for blue and blond.
tamnoplava
dark blonde
How to use colors in Serbian sentences?
If you liked this lesson, move on inside Serbonika’s courses and learn proper Serbian with our Beginner Serbian course. In this chapter you’ll learn how to combine colors with nouns.
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