Color words can function as both adjectives and nouns.  In "the color
blue", "blue" is a noun in apposition to "color".  In "I like the blue
color" the reference might be to a particular blue hue in a painting,
picture, color swatch, etc., and "blue" would be functioning as an
adjective, as the "-y" on "orangy" suggests.

Herb



-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of stein
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 3:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Blue Color

 

In one of the forums for English Teachers,  a teacher wrote:

 

One of my students wrote "I like the blue color"...and I corrected this
to

"I like the color blue." 

 But why, I do not know...any exlanations for this? Why does the
adjective 

follow the noun here??

 

I found the following explanation:

 

According to the book ABC of Common Grammatica Errors by Nigel D Turton
Macmillan Heinemann Publishers Ltd. 1995, the explanation to this
question
is:

Color is not normally used after blue, yellow, red, etc. We use color
after
a color name only when we are trying to describe a color which is a
mixture,
e.g. "The head and beak of the king parrot are an orangy-red color."

 

Does anyone have any other explanation?

 

 Dalia Stein

Beit Berl College, Israel

 

 

 

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