adjectives position

Question

in spanish when do the adjective comes after the noun and vice versa for example " los últimos segundos" or "los segundos últimos".....

Welcome to SD. - Good question. Wait for a native speaker to answer. :) - ian-hill, Sep 9, 2017

welcome to the forum, :) - 006595c6, Sep 9, 2017

Answer 1

Hi abdel, welcome to the forum

In Spanish, as what position of anything in the sentence concerns, we don't have strict rules of anything really.

We don't even use subjects, anything goes , as we might say.

Look at this sentence.

My mother bought a car for my brother yesterday.

In English you could not place the subject after the verb...the time sequence has a strict position ...I mean, we can do "almost" anything in Spanish.

Mi madre compró un coche para mi hermano ayer.

Ayer compró mi madre un coche para mi hermano.

Para mi hermano compró mi madre ayer un coche.

There are still some more possibilities of placement, it depends on what you want to emphasize.

So, your question:

What do you want to emphasize?

Los últimos segundos de su vida fueron dramáticos.

Los segundos últimos de su vida fueron dramáticos.

Both are correct, you would find the second possibility more dramatic and for example used in literature.

Answer 2

I would say los útimos segundos, but that is partly because there is a song I like called la última noche.

Generally adjectives go after the noun, but there are exceptions. Sometimes, the meaning can change depending where it is placed.

Here is a link on this site.

Spanish Dict. Adjective

Here is a site with good explanations and quizzes

StudySpanish

There is something else called apocope which you may come across where some masculine single adjectives when before the noun lose the last letter eg primer, buen etc

Answer 3

In general it's after the noun it modifies.
La casa blanca, el árbol pequeño, los campos secos, etc. The adjective before is many times used in literature or poetry: la blanca casa, el pequeño árbol, los secos campos etc. This doesn't always happen . It depends on the poet or writer .

There are jokes about this:
For example
it¡s not the same

una mujer mala- una mala mujer (the first is mean, the second a prostitute) un hombre grande- un gran hombreThe first is big in size, the second is a great man)
un muchacho pobre- un poblre muchacho- The first doesn't have money, for the second you feel sorry.

Etc. As for the grammar. I'll let others explain. From the point of view of use, 99% of the times the adjective comes after the noun.

You read my mind. - Daniela2041, Sep 9, 2017

Yeah, I am a mundo reader lol - Polenta, Sep 9, 2017