Grammar - Adjectives that Come Before Nouns

Please make note of the vocabulary words listed below. The first group will be words that come before a noun and the second group will be words that can come either before or after a noun.

ADJECTIVES THAT COME BEFORE NOUNS

ADJECTIVES THAT COME BEFORE AND AFTER NOUNS

EXAMPLES

Let’s look at just a few examples to make certain you understand adjectives before and after nouns. Let’s look at the adjective FIRST. If you wanted to say FIRST MAN in Spanish you would say, PRIMER HOMBRE. Notice that since HOMBRE is a masculine word, the adjective dropped off the ‘o’ at the end of primero.

Now let’s look at FIRST HOUSE. In Spanish that would be PRIMERA CASA. The adjective takes on the feminine form and since it is a feminine word, the ‘a’ remains at the end of the word.

Next, let’s look at GREAT/BIG/LARGE. As you learned, this word is spelled slightly different depending upon what you want it to say and its placement with a noun. The Spanish word for big and large is GRANDE. If you want to say it was a BIG BOOK or a LARGE BOOK, you would say, GRANDE LIBRO. But, what if you wanted to say it was a GREAT BOOK? Then you would simply say, GRAN LIBRO. Note that GRANDE can appear either before or after the noun it is describing. However, GRAN generally only appears before the noun it is describing. Rarely would you ever see LIBRO GRAN to say GREAT BOOK. On the other hand, GRANDE LIBRO and LIBRO GRANDE can both be used to say, BIG (or LARGE) BOOK.

Okay, it is now time to test this out in the quiz section below. For each group of words listed in all capitalized letters in the quiz, find the correct Spanish or English words that will mean the same thing. Those words will need to be in the correct order. Be careful to watch for spelling, gender, and plural or singular forms of the word(s).