Hyphenated adjectives

[Caryn Davidson]

Salut - Je suis coincee: j'essaie de traduire l'expression "the red-orange blossoms" et j'hesite a mettre "les fleurs rouges-oranges." Ca me parait bizarre de mettre un "s" a la fin des deux couleurs. Et a vous? Est-ce que c'est correct?

[Neil Coffey]

Taking "correct" in the sense of "the opinion according to common prescriptive convention", then commentators tend to concur that in the case of two adjectives linked by a hyphen in this way (or indeed, where a colour word is modified by another adjective), the adjectives are invariable, so you'd write <b>les fleurs rouge-orange</b>, just as you'd also write <b>les fleurs rouge foncé</b>.

 

However, remember that this is essentially an arbitrary, made-up convention. A few Internet searches will reveal that there is a lot of variation as to whether or not this convention is actually followed in practice.

[Caryn Davidson]

Thank you very much - your reply makes sense.  I'm working on the French translation of Joshua Tree National Park's brochure, so on behalf of all future francophone visitors, merci mille fois! Bonne annee!