Location of nuevo (or other adj)

Question

I wonder what is the rule of locating adj in Spanish,

for example,

new car ( coche nuevo ) new patient ( nuevo paciente )

the word order is different.. I'm so confused about that, please explain about those diffrences.

Answer 1

After the noun, adjectives restrict their meaning:

Los niños alegres recibieron regalos (The happy boys received gifts)

In other words, among all the children, we are talking about the happy ones; the ones who weren't happy probably got no gifts at all.

However, in:

Los alegres niños recibieron regalos (The happy boys received gifts)

we are not restricting the number of children who are going to get gifts (all the children will get one), but simply adding that all the children were happy. In this position, the adjective is non-restrictive.

In "new patient", it doesn't really matter whether we restrict or not, because restricting we'd be referring to just one patient (the new one), but without restriction, we'd be talking about a single patient, who happens to be the new one. However, after the noun, "nuevo" is often interpreted as "recently created".

Answer 2

HI ramos, welcome to the forum

Have a look at this reference article by Paralee.

Placement of adjectives