Do you know how to form adjectives in Italian? If you are learning Italian, you may probably already know that noun-adjective agreement is a very important aspect of the Italian grammar. First of all, what is an adjective? An adjective is a word we use to give more information about a noun.

Some examples of English adjectives are beautiful, ugly, nice, intelligent, sad, happy, etc. So, it’s very important to learn Italian adjectives, because we constantly use them to describe people, things, situations, and so on.

Today, we would like to help you learn how to form adjectives in Italian, and remember that if you want to discover more aspects of Italian grammar (prepositions, articles, verbs, etc.) you can visit our Italian blog.

How to form adjectives in Italian?

Italian adjectives agree in gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural) with the nouns they modify, for example:

• Questo cappello è molto bello – This hat is very beautiful
• Questi cappelli sono molto belli – These hats are very beautiful
• Questa maglietta è molto bella – This t-shirt is very beautiful
• Queste magliette sono molto belle – These t-shirts are very beautiful

As you can see in the examples above, the English adjective beautiful never changes, whilst the Italian adjective bello, which is used with a masculine and singular noun, changes depending on the gender and number of the word it modifies:

• When the word is masculine and plural, as for example cappelli, the adjective bello becomes belli.
• When the word is feminine and singular, as for example maglietta, the adjective becomes bella.
• When the word is feminine and plural, as for example magliette, the adjective becomes belle.

GROUPS OF ITALIAN ADJECTIVES

In Italian there are three groups of adjectives:

• The first group includes all those adjectives which in the singular form terminate in –o when masculine and in –a when feminine, whilst in the plural form they terminate in –i when masculine and in –e when feminine, as for example the Italian adjective bello, as mentioned in the previous examples.
• The second group includes those adjectives which in the singular form always terminate in –e, and in the plural form always terminate in –i, both for masculine and feminine, as for example the Italian adjective grande, which means big.
• Finally, there is a third smaller group of adjectives which in the singular form always terminate in –a both for masculine and feminine. But in the plural form, they terminate in –i for masculine and in –e for feminine, as for example the Italian adjective egoista, which means selfish.

Noun-adjective agreement may seem quite complicated at first sight, but it’s just a matter of practice! Start creating simple and short sentences, and little by little you will learn how to form adjectives in Italian. If you want to know more about this topic, watch the video below made by one of our Italian teachers:

If you enjoyed our post about Italian adjectives agreement and want to know more about our Italian lessons, contact us and we will be very happy to help you.