Adjectives

Well done! You have learned all about the two basic blocks of English language: nouns and verbs. You should be able to read and write any basic sentence—with any time or intention.

At the very start, though, I also mentioned two advanced concepts. Something I called “modifiers” that can change what a word means and give more detail.

You could say: “Two girls walk down the street. One finds a wallet.”

But then we’d all be wondering: what do the girls look like? Which of them finds the wallet? How can we distinguish them? What does the street look like? Where are they?

Adjectives help specify nouns by adding detail. Like: “A short and a tall girl walk down main street. The tall one finds a green wallet.”

There are two big groups of modifiers:

Adjectives: change nouns
Adverbs: change verbs

This chapter and the next will discuss both. Let’s start with adjactives.

Adjectives modify or describe nouns

Example

Red 🔴, green 🟢, sleepy 💤, loud 📢, forbidden ⛔, bright 🔆, hot 🌡️, boring, beautiful, tall, short, nice, friendly, best, great, …

Placement

There are two ways to place adjectives:

Before the noun: Yesterday, I placed a small table in my big house.
After verbs of being or perception: My house is big. The table seems small. The room feels cramped.

Adjectives don’t change their form based on the gender or number (singular/plural) of the noun to which they belong. They always stay the same.

Remark

Yes, we’ve seen those verbs of being and perception many times now. They are a special class of verbs that allow these special grammar constructions, which are short and useful. In many cases, a rule doesn’t apply to all verbs, but only this specific class.

Remark

The adjectives involved, present and concerned can appear behind the noun. But that changes their meaning.

Comparing

Humans love to compare. We’re simply very good at comparing and recognizing patterns. As such, grammar for comparisons is available in nearly any language.

Comparisons are written based on their result. They can be equal, different (“unequal”), or have one clear winner.

This is the only situation in which an adjective changes how its written. Namely, we need the comparative and superlative version. (Those are explained below.)

Equal; as + adjective + as => Jack is as tall as Jim
Unequal; not as + adjective + as => Jack is not as tall as Jim
Unequal; less + adjective + than => Jack is less tall than Jim
Unequal; comparative adjective + than => Jack is taller than Jim
Clear winner; the + superlative adjective =>Jack is the tallest of the two.

Using the comparative and superlative adjective on giraffes

Comparative & Superlative

How do you form this special adjective syntax? It depends on the number of syllables in a word.

One syllable

Add -er for comparative and -est for superlative.

If the adjective ends with a single vowel + consonant, you need to double the consonant.

Example

Tall (🦒) => Taller (🦒🦒) => Tallest (🦒🦒🦒)

Example

Sad (😥) => Sadder (😥😥) => Saddest (😥😥😥)

Two syllables

Some of these use the same pattern as above. (Use “-er” for comparative, “-est” for superlative.)

But for some, you’ll immediately notice it becomes hard to read or pronounce. In that case, you don’t modify the adjective, but place a helper word in front: more + adjective for comparative, and most + adjective for superlative.

If you are not sure, you can always play safe and use that system.

Adjectives ending in -y need to replace it with an -i.

Example

Happy (🤗) => Happier (🤗🤗) => Happiest (🤗🤗🤗)

Example

Tilted => More tilted => Most titled

Three syllables

These adjectives always follow the pattern of adding most and more in front. (Changing the adjective to add something would make them too long.)

Example

Important => More important => Most important

Example

Beautiful => More beautiful => Most beautiful

Irregular

Like verbs and nouns, the most important or most common ones are irregular. They don’t follow these rules and must be memorized.

Normal Adjective	Comparative	Superlative
good	better	best
bad	worse	worst
little	less	least
much	more	most
far	further / farther	furthest / farthest

Quantities

At the start of this course, we talked about countable and uncountable nouns.

If you want to compare quantities, this is important again.

-	A = B	A = B	A > B	A < B
Countable	many	few	more	fewer
Uncountable	much	little	more	less

The first “A = B” is when two nouns are equal and numerous. There are a bunch of them. There’s no shortage.

The second “A = B” is when two nouns are equal and scarce. They are almost depleted. You don’t count many of them.

Example

There are as many children on the playground as ants in the world. ( = there were a lot of children there)
We had little money ( = they didn’t have a lot of money, money is uncountable)
He had even less patience than Jim.
They had fewer points than the other team.

Remark

These days, many people forget that some of these words exist. Everything is “less”. Less money. Less birds in the tree. Less ideas for my next tutorial. This is wrong. Fewer birds in the tree. Fewer ideas. But the mistake is so common, that this is hard to avoid.

Multiple mdjectives

There’s no fixed order to follow when using multiple adjectives in a row.

There is, however, generally accepted order that feels most natural:

Quantity => Value/Opinion => Size => Temperature => Age => Shape => Colour => Origin => Material

Example

The two beautiful birds. (🐦🐦)
The large, cold ice cream. (➕🧊🍦)
The two ten year olds. (👦👦)
The rectangular, green box. (🟩)
The awesome metal car. (🏎️)

On usage

As you can see, adjectives add more detail and information. But they also increase sentence length and complexity.

Therefore, do not stuff every sentence with adjectives. Only use them when crucial or quite useful. “White snow” is just snow. “Green grass” is also just grass. “The old worn damaged book” is a bit overkill, one of the adjectives should be enough.

In some cases, you can find a single noun to replace adjective + noun. A “young human” is obviously a “child”. An “automated vehicle” is a “car” or “automobile”.

Remark

In Dutch, this is simply called an “auto”. For years, as a kid, I thought English used the word “auto” as well and didn’t know what those weird “cars” were.

What if an adjective isn’t strong enough? Maybe that isn’t just a damaged book. It’s almost falling apart!

To intensify adjectives, you can use words like very, really or extremely in front of them.

But those are actually … adverbs! Because you can also use them to intensify verbs.

Well, isn’t that nice, the next chapter is about that.

Continue with this course