Language Bites, Volume I: Spanish ✔

Adjectives

Since we've looked at some minor Spanish oddities already, today's lesson will blow your mind. Adjectives in English are beautiful words that can be used to describe a noun. Good, gorgeous, lovely, ugly, evil, and nasty are examples of adjectives. 

I like Spanish adjectives because the syntax (word arrangement) is a bit different than in English, and it gets turned in our favor. Consider the following sentence. 

I eat delicious food.

Notice how the adjective comes before the noun in this sentence (ex. delicious comes before food). Now let's see it translated into Spanish:

Yo como comida deliciosa.

The adjective is placed before the noun in all cases except for the cases of numbers, comparatives, and superlatives. But before we look at the other rules, let's first clear up a few confusions:

1.) If you are saying what something is and you use an adjective, the syntax is the same in Spanish as in English. For example, The food is delicious would still be La comida es deliciosa.

2.) To make something a comparative/superlative adjective, add más in front of the word. For example, The food is more delicious would be La comida es más deliciosa. To say that something is better than another thing, you say mejor. For example: Arkada es mejor que Joye en español. The word for best is más mejor.

3.) To say something is worse, say menos before the adjective. To say something is worst, say más menos. 

Now for the rules of adjectives themselves. Adjectives, like nouns, have genders and numbers. If an adjective ends in a consonant, chances are it won't change based on gender, but only on number. The adjective must match the noun both in gender and in number. Consider below:

Yo como comida deliciosa. (Food is a feminine singular noun in Spanish, so the adjective will be too.)

Yo no como ojos desagradables. (I do not eat gross garlics. The noun ojos is a masculine plural.)