22 Vocabulario: descripciones
Descriptive adjectives
When we describe people, places or things (nouns), we use descriptive words such as “tall” or “slow” (adjectives) to do so. For example, we could say “Mary is tall” or “the car is slow”. The previous sentences use the verb “to be” to make the connection between the noun and the adjective. We could also use the noun and adjective immediately together in phrases such as “’the tall girl” and “the slow car”. In Spanish, the equivalent adjectives need to agree with the noun they describe in gender (masculine / feminine) and in number (singular / plural). Let’s look at these examples:
| Mary es alta. | Mary is tall. |
| La chica alta es mi amiga. | The tall girl is my friend. |
| El carro es lento. | The car is slow. |
| No me gusta el carro lento. | I don’t like the slow car. |
The adjective “alta” ends in an “a” because in both cases it describes a female: Mary and “la chica”. The adjective “lento” ends in an “o” because it describes “carro”, and nouns ending in “o” are masculine. We say that the adjectives in these cases agree in gender with the noun they describe.
Adjectives must also agree with the noun in number. Let’s pluralize the sentence “Mary es alta” by adding her tall sister, and let’s say that I don’t like slow cars in general:
| Mary y su hermana son altas. | Mary and her sister are tall. |
| No me gustan los carros lentos. | I don’t like slow cars. |
In the case of Mary and her sister, the adjective “alta” is pluralized by adding “s” because there are two girls. As is done in English, the noun “carro” is pluralized by adding “s”, but so is the adjective “lento”. Both adjectives “altas” and “lentos” agree in number because they are pluralized to match the plural nouns.
OJO: Did you notice that the adjectives “alta” and “lento” follow the nouns “chica” and “carro”?
| La chica alta es mi amiga. | The tall girl is my friend. |
| No me gusta el carro lento. | I don’t like the slow car. |
The adjective-noun word order that we’re used to English (for example, the “White House”) needs to be reversed in Spanish so that we say the equivalent of “house white” (casa blanca).
Let’s look at four points to keep in mind when adjectives describe nouns:
1. Adjectives that end in “o” will change so that they agree in gender (o-a) and number (os-as) with the noun they describe.
| Javier es un niño simpático. | Javier is a nice boy. |
| Julia es una niña simpática. | Julia is a nice girl. |
| Javier y Julia son niños simpáticos. | Javier and Julia are nice kids. |
| Julia y Ana son niñas simpáticas. | Julia and Ana are nice girls. |
OJO: when there are both males and females in a group, the masculine form is used.
2. Adjectives that end in “e” and “-ista”, or a consonant, do not agree in gender, only in number—just add “s” to the vowels “e / a” and “es” to the consonant.
| La solución simple | The simple solution |
| Las soluciones simples | The simple solutions |
| Un estudiante idealista | An idealistic