It’s Professor Dave, let’s go over some adjectives.
If we remember our parts of speech from grade school, a noun is any object, like an apple.
Then there are words called adjectives, which describe or add detail to nouns.
Adjectives that can be applied to this apple could indicate quantity, describe quality,
specify possession or location, or any number of other things.
There are a few differences between Italian and English usage of adjectives.
First of all, you will typically find the Italian adjective after the noun instead of
before it.
So in English we would say the red car, whereas in Italian, we say the car red.
The noun is specified first, and then it is described, which kind of makes more sense
when you think about it.
The other aspect to keep in mind is that adjectives will need to agree with the nouns they are
describing in terms of gender and number.
In grammar we call this agreement.
Agreement doesn’t necessarily mean rhyming, although that is often the case, but don’t
always look for that, as there are exceptions.
For example, we can say macchina rossa, or motorino rosso.
The adjective ends in either A or O depending on whether the noun is masculine or feminine.
This won’t always be a perfect match.
To avoid any headaches, let’s outline a few simple rules.
First, adjectives are divided into three classes.
The first one contains adjectives whose dictionary forms end in O.
These will have four forms, masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, and feminine
plural.
We can do this with azzurro.
Next, we have the adjectives whose dictionary forms end in E. These will have only two forms,
singular and plural.
One object, whether masculine or feminine, will be veloce.
Multiple objects will be veloci, again regardless of gender.
And lastly, a handful of adjectives have just one invariable form.
Regardless of gender or number, we always use the same form.
Blu is such an adjective.
Always the same.
Now let’s see some examples of adjectives and assign them to the classes they belong to.
Now we are ready to look at some complete examples so that we can see the agreement
between the noun and adjective.
First let’s look at this pizza.
What kind of pizza?
Now there are several.
The expensive pizzas are sitting on a table.
What kind of table?
Let’s get rid of this old English table and get some new ones.
Students love eating pizza.
What kinds of students are here for a snack?
But they’re all quite tall.
What are they wearing?
Now that we know how adjectives work, let’s run through some common adjectives that we
may want to use.
First, some adjectives regarding appearance.
Now a few regarding personality.
We will learn many more adjectives as we go, but that’s plenty to start, so let’s check comprehension.