Q&ADescriptive Adjectives

Descriptive Adjectives

Overview

As the name may suggest, descriptive adjectives describe a quality of a noun. In Spanish all parts of a noun phrase must match in gender and number to show they they come as a distinctive part of the sentence. Adjectives must agree with the noun (or pronoun) they describe in gender and in number to show which noun they are describing. This means that if the noun is feminine, the adjective must be feminine, and if that same noun is plural, the adjective will be feminine AND plural. You can easily find the gender of a noun by looking at the article that precedes it.

There are exceptions, however.

las faldas - feminine, plural
las faldas bonitas - all parts feminine and plural

Descriptive Adjectives

You will find all adjectives listed in their masculine singular form in dictionaries, so it is important to know how to change each singular masculine adjective to match the noun you already have. Most adjectives end in -o, -e, - or a consonant in their singular masculine forms. Below you will find the rules for matching these adjectives to their respective nouns in gender and number.

Adjectives that end in -o

These adjectives describe nouns in both gender and number, and have have four endings, one each for masculine, feminine, singular, and plural. These types of adjectives make up majority of the adjectives in Spanish.

-o Adjective Endings


	Singular	Plural
Masculine	-o	-os
Feminine	-a	-as

Change the Gender: To change the masculine form to feminine, take off the -o and add an -a.

Es un perro negro.
La camisa bonita es de Francia.

-o Plurals: To make an -o adjective plural in the masculine or feminine form, add -s to the singular ending.

Los hombres son altos.
Nosotras somos delgadas.

Adjectives that end in -e

Adjectives that end in -e do not change according to gender as they agree with both masculine and feminine in the basic form, but do change for number.

-e Adjective Endings


Singular	Plural
-e	-es

Tengo un abuelo interesante.
Mi abuela es interesante.

-e Plurals: To make an -e adjective plural, add an -s to the singular ending.

Los árboles son verdes.
Allí están las niñas torpes.

Adjectives that end in a consonant

Adjectives that end in a consonant do not change according to gender, but do change for number.

El coche es azul.
La gata feliz está en la sala.

Consonant Plurals

To make an adjective that ends in a consonant plural, add - es to the singular ending.

Los enigmas son fáciles.
Las mujeres jovenes les gusta este café.

Many nationalities end in a consonant, but follow different rules as they DO change according to gender.

Nationalities as Adjectives


	masculine		feminine
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
German	alemán	alemanes	alemana	alemanas
Danish	danés	daneses	danesa	danesas
Spanish	español	españoles	española	españolas
Finnish	finlandés	finlandeses	finlandesa	finlandesas
French	francés	franceses	francesa	francesas
Irish	irlandés	irlandeses	irlandesa	irlandesas
Japanese	japonés	japoneses	japonesa	japonesas
Lebanese	libanés	libaneses	libanesa	libanesas
Thai	tailandés	tailandeses	tailandesa	tailandesas

Special Changes for the Ladies

For the feminine form of nationalities, add an -a to the singular masculine form and drop the tilde (written accent).

Mi abuelo irlandés habla español.
Mi abuela irlandesa habla español.

Nationality Plurals

To make nationality adjectives plural, drop the tilde and add an -es for masculine forms and an -s for feminine forms.

Los quesos franceses están en el supermercado.
Mis amigas japonesas vienen a los Estados Unidos.

Lowercase en español

Notice that in Spanish, nationalities are NOT capitalized and that the tilde (written accent) is dropped in the feminine and plural forms.

Exercises

1) Match each noun to the appropriate adjective in the word bank. There is more than one correct answer for some! Remember to match in gender AND number!