How to make adjectives agree - Easy Learning Grammar Italian

1  The basics

• When you look up an adjective in a dictionary you find the masculine singular form.
• If you want to use an adjective to describe a feminine noun you often have to change the ending.
• If you want to use an adjective to describe a plural noun you nearly always have
  to change the ending.

2  How to make adjectives feminine

• If the masculine adjective ends in –o, change –o to –a.

• You don’t change the ending for the feminine:

• if the masculine adjective ends in –e

• Note that adjectives such as italiano, inglese, francese do not start with
  a capital letter in Italian.

• in the case of some colours

• Note that these adjectives don’t change in the plural either.

• if the adjective ends with a consonant

• Note that these adjectives don’t change in the plural either.

3  How to make adjectives plural

• If the masculine singular adjective ends in –o, change –o to –i.

• If the feminine singular adjective ends in –a, change –a to –e.

• If the adjective ends in –e, change –e to –i for both masculine and feminine plural.

• Some adjectives do not change in the plural.

• Adjectives that do not change for the feminine or plural are called invariable, which is abbreviated to inv in some dictionaries.

• Note that when you’re describing a couple consisting of a man and a woman
  or a group of people, use a masculine plural adjective unless the group consists entirely of females.

4  Irregular adjectives

• There are three very common adjectives which are different from other adjectives
  – bello, buono and grande.
• When the adjective bello (meaning beautiful) is used in front of a masculine
  noun it has different forms depending on which letter follows it, just like the definite article.

• bell’ is used before vowels in the masculine and feminine singular forms.

• bello is used in front of z and s + another consonant in the masculine singular form.

• begli is used in front of vowels, z and s + another consonant in the masculine plural form.

• The adjective buono (meaning good) is usually shortened to buon when it comes before a masculine singular noun.

• The shortened form of buono is not used in front of nouns that start with z or s
  + another consonant.

• The adjective grande (meaning big, large or great) is often shortened to gran when it comes before a singular noun starting with a consonant.

5  Where do you put the adjective?

• You put most adjectives AFTER the noun.

• Note that if you have two adjectives you link them with e (meaning and).

• The meaning of some adjectives changes depending on whether they come
  after or before the noun.

• Note that if you add molto (meaning very) to an adjective, the adjective always goes after the noun.

• Some types of adjectives always go in front of the noun:

• adjectives that are used to point things out, such as questo (meaning this) and quello (meaning that)

• For more information on Demonstrative adjectives, see Demonstrative adjectives.

• possessive adjectives such as mio (meaning my), tuo (meaning your) and
  suo (meaning his or her)

• ogni (meaning each, every), qualche (meaning some) and nessuno (meaning no)

• For more information on Indefinite adjectives, see Indefinite adjectives.

• question words

• For more information on Questions, see Questions.