7.8 Los adjetivos

Instrucciones

Read a short article about where to place adjectives in a sentence and how to make them agree in gender with nouns.

Nouns
In lesson 3, you learned that all nouns (person, place, thing, or idea) in Spanish have gender. Typically. nouns are either masculine or feminine.

Adjectives
In this activity, you will learn about adjectives in Spanish. Adjectives describe nouns. For example, we can describe the noun, “el libro” (the book) with adjectives like “aburrido” (boring) or “interesante” (interesting) to say “el libro aburrido” (the boring book) or “el libro interesante” (The interesting book).

Just like nouns, adjectives can be masculine or feminine. There are two main rules to remember when using adjectives en español.

Rule #1 - Adjectives usually come after the noun. 

Although there are exceptions, adjectives usually come after the noun en español. This is different than in English, where adjectives usually come before the noun.


Examples:
  • El libro aburrido. = The boring book.
  • La clase interesante. = The interesting class.

    Rule #2 - An adjective must agree in gender and number with the noun it describes.
    Generally, an adjective en español can have a masculine or feminine form, just like nouns. Masculine adjectives typically end in -o and feminine adjectives typically end in -a. If you are describing a plural noun, you will add an “-s” to the end of the adjective.

    Examples:
    • El libro aburrido. = The boring book.
    • La clase divertida. = The fun class.
    • Los profesores interesantes. = The interesting teachers.;
    • Las chicasaburridas = The boring girls.

    Knowledge Check Questions