1.9.3 Noun/Adjective agreement
Adjective agreement
First, what is an adjective? If you played Mad Libs as a child, you’ll remember that it is a word that describes a noun which is a person, place, or thing. All adjectives need to agree with the noun that they are referring to in both gender and number. What are the stumbling blocks to getting this right consistently?
- Nouns in English don’t have gender. And adjectives don’t show plurality in English.
For example:
| The cat is white | El gato es blanco | |
| versus | ||
| The cats are white | Los gatos son blancos |
- Some adjectives in Spanish don’t show gender, some only show number.
For example:
Hay suficiente comida para tener una fiesta divertida.
Versus
Hay suficientes invitados para tener una fiesta divertida.
- Sometimes adverbs look like adjectives. If you think back, adverbs are words that modify verbs. And verbs do not have gender or number in Spanish. Therefore adverbs just have one form. Sometimes that form is unique:
| Adjective | Adverb | |
| Hay mucha gente en esta clase. | La clase está muy llena | |
| La clase tiene muchos estudiantes | La clase está muy llena |
But other times the adjectival form of a word and the adverbial form are the same and you need to rely on context to determine which it is:
| Adjective | Adverb | |
| Tenemos suficiente comida | No sé si estudié lo suficiente | |
| Tenemos suficientes invitados |
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