I learned it high school French class. My teacher was very enthusiastic about her French heritage. And she said in France it’s blue, white and red. (I just tried to do it in French. But the spellchecker on my phone won’t let me.)
Also, on an early episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation Captain Picard points this out. Then Data is about to mention Germany when Picard cuts him off.
Anyway Germany surely is not the only one. How do various countries mention their colors? I mean I assume Italy is Green, White and Red. But I could be wrong.
The Australian National Colours, since 1984, are green and gold. This has, of course, nothing much to do with the flag, which is boring old red white and blue, totally ripped off from the Poms.
Maybe one day we’ll get a flag to match.
The Indigenous colours (and flag) are Red Yellow Black. I’m not sure if that’s a standardised ordering though - the flag itself is well-known, but not so much what order you mention its colours in
“Red, black and yellow” is the usual ordering, in my experience. And Google sorta confirms it; a search for “red yellow and black” turns up a wide variety of results, but a search for “red black and yellow” turns up results dominated by reference to the Australian Aboriginal flag.
I didn’t understand this thread at first. You’re asking how the National colours are referred to? I don’t think we do refer to them in Canada. The colours are red and white, but I’m blanking on any equivalent to “Hooray for the red white and blue” or anything like that.
The Austrian flag is three horizontal bands of – top to bottom – red / white / red again. I understand that local patriots have a rhyme: Rot-Weiss-Rot / Bis dem Tod (Red-White-Red / Even unto death).
Spain’s flag is rojigualda (redyellow or redgolden); the Republican version with purple instead of the bottom red is the tricolor (stress is on the last syllable, otherwise sounds like in English).
In Spanish, the flag of Euskadi is usually called la ikurriña, where the noun is the Basque word for flag; by the same token, the flags of Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencia are called senyeras(CAT) or señeras (ES), that being the Catalan/Valenciano word. The normal version of the Catalan flag, with just the bars of Aragon, is sometimes called la quatribarrada (CAT) or cuatribarrada (ES), to distinguish it from the independentist estelada (“the one with the star”). Andalusians speak of la blanquiverde (the whitegreen).
This brings irresistibly to mind, a most disgusting joke which I read of in a (mostly scholarly) book about the Spanish Civil War. The side which ultimately won (sorry, Nava, I recall you telling us elsewhere that “Nationalist” is not the correct word – but I fear I’m too aged an Anglophone to get out of that habit now) with the red-and-yellow-only banner; and the Republican red-yellow-purple counterpart; I understand that guys on both sides identified them respectively, with black humour, as “blood and pus”, and “blood, pus, and permanganate”.
It’s Red, White and Blue in the UK, but in all honesty, I don’t think it’s a phrase we use much in a national context - perhaps too many others have the same colours for us to feel pride in the combo.
Doesn’t stop the Americans. Every now and again I hear the jingle for 1996’s Olympic Gymnast Barbie (“Pride of the red, white and blue!”) in my head.
I certainly don’t remember anyone ever mentioning the order of the colours of the Union Jack when I lived in Britain. At best, people would mention the crosses (George, Andrew, someone else for Northern Ireland) from time to time, and how you could tell the flag was upside down because of… something to do with St. Andrew’s saltire I think.
