A1 · The adjectives
Adjective agreement
English has one form for everything; here there are four or two.
At a glance
- Remember
- In -e there are only two forms.
- Form
- un libro rossoa red book
- Signal words
- -o / -a / -i / -e
- -e / -i
- Trap
- Wrong:Una casa granda e vecchia.Right:Una casa grande e vecchia.
Your turn
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The form
The forms and what they mean
Each row gives the meaning first, then the form in Italian.
| a red book | un libro rosso |
| a red house | una casa rossa |
| two red books | due libri rossi |
| two red houses | due case rosse |
| a big book | un libro grande |
| two big houses | due case grandi |
The rules one by one
The form this topic is aboutThe word that calls for it
Adjectives in -o have four forms, those in -e have two.
Una casa vecchia e un palazzo grande.An old house and a big building.
The agreement is with the noun.
Le scarpe nuove sono comode.The new shoes are comfortable.
With mixed nouns the masculine plural is used.
Mio padre e mia madre sono stanchi.My father and my mother are tired.
After essere the adjective agrees in the same way.
Queste mele sono buone.These apples are good.
Example sentences
Ho comprato una giacca nera.I bought a black jacket.
Le strade sono strette e vecchie.The streets are narrow and old.
I miei amici sono simpatici.My friends are nice.
È una città molto interessante.It is a very interesting city.
The trap English speakers fall into
Watch out
An adjective in -e has no feminine form, because it does not need one. Una casa granda does not exist — it is una casa grande, exactly like un libro grande. Applying the four-form rule to every adjective invents forms nobody uses, and it is the standard second-week mistake: having finally accepted that adjectives change, one makes them all change.
The full explanation
Read it all · about 1 min
Adjectives in -o have four forms: rosso, rossa, rossi, rosse. Adjectives in -e have two: grande, grandi, and they say nothing at all about gender.
There is no English equivalent to any of this, so it is worth being clear about what is being asked. The adjective does not change to suit the speaker or the sentence; it copies the gender and the number of one particular noun, and it copies them whether it stands next to that noun or across the sentence from it. Una macchina rossa even if a man is driving.
Which of the two patterns an adjective follows is visible in the word itself: the final vowel says it. That is the part English speakers tend to overlook while worrying about the agreement — an adjective in -e is simply not asked about gender, and giving it a feminine form invents something that does not exist.
With two nouns of different gender the masculine plural is used: il ragazzo e la ragazza sono italiani. And the agreement also happens after essere, where English never puts anything: Le case sono vecchie.
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