So I just started learning Japanese. And I’ve come across something very confusing. The color blue. Or any word it seems, can be spelled any number of ways. The book I’m following goes over a few hiragana then tells us some words we can spell with those. Such as:
あお – ao – blue
However when I put this into google translate, it gives me – 青い
But then it seems like just that first character is the kanji for blue.
But there also seems to be be variations on that: 青；蒼；碧
So my question is; which of these is correct? Is it ok to just write it as あお?
I’m sure I’ll run into this with other words too. So I just thought I’d ask here before it got too confusing in my head.
3 comments
あお is blue as a noun. あおい is blue as an adjective.
蒼 and 碧 are different shades of blue, more specialised, more poetic. For starters just stick to 青. You can use 青 and 青色 (あおいろ) interchangeably (sort of, bit as a beginner don’t worry about it) as a noun, 青い as an adjective.
>But there also seems to be be variations on that
Think about how you choose the right word from many regular and poetic varieties in your own language.