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title: Colours — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics
description: «Colours», a lesson of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Picking crayons with Ming you hear a little «-sè» on the end of every colour: hóngsè, lánsè, huángsè. sè is the word for colour, just as yánsè is «colour» 
---

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# Colours

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Lesson 8 of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school: 11 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/chinese-street/8-colours/).

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- [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/0/) — Picking crayons with Ming you hear a little «-sè» on the end of every colour: hóngsè, lánsè, huángsè. sè is the word for colour, just as yánsè is «colour» itself in «nǐ xǐhuan shénme yánsè?» (what colour do you like?).
- [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/1/) — Colours carry feelings.
- [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/3/) — Even writing someone's name in red ink is avoided, because it was once used for the names of the dead.
- [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/4/) — Watch the sounds: lǜ (green) needs the new ü — say «ee» with lips rounded for «oo» — or it turns into lù (road).
- [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/5/) — And never give a man a green hat: it is a famous joke about being made a fool of.
- [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/6/) — Brown is «coffee colour», kāfēisè, and orange the colour is chéngsè, while the fruit has its own name.
- [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/9/) — lánsè («LAHN?-suh») is blue; the blue of the sky can also be called qīng, a word for blue or green.
- [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/10/) — lǜsè («lü-suh», lips rounded as for «oo» while saying «ee») is green; lǜ is not lù (road), and a green hat is a joke about being made a fool of.
- [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/12/) — hēisè («HAY-suh») is black; hēi also means dark (tiān hēi le = it's got dark), and «hēi!» alone is a cheeky «hey!».
- [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/17/) — kāfēisè («KAH-fay-suh», coffee colour) is brown; zōngsè is another word for brown.
- [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/8-colours/18/) — nǐ xǐhuan shénme yánsè? («nee SHEE-hwahn SHUN-muh YEN?-suh») means what colour do you like?; you answer wǒ xǐhuan lánsè (I like blue).

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- ← previous: [Counting to 100 and lucky numbers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/7-counting-to-a-hundred-lucky-numbers/)
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- ↑ back to [Chinese street](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/)