Comprehension - Putting Nouns and Adjectives Together

Red is an adjective as it describes the car. In English, the adjective will often come before the noun but not always. For example, you could say, “His car is red.” In this case, the adjective comes after the noun. In Spanish, however, the adjective will always come after the noun.

Looking at the example above, in Spanish, 'red car' would be written as either 'coche de rojo' or 'coche rojo' (car of red). It would never be written as 'rojo coche'. If you look at the Spanish Easy Review quiz titled The Role of the Word 'Of' it will explain the importance of the word 'de' (of) when linking a noun to an adjective. In that quiz it only linked colors with a noun.

Because your vocabulary now includes many verbs and you have learned how to conjugate those verbs in the present tense, this test is going to challenge you on putting nouns and adjectives together while using verbs. Again, let’s look at the example given above, i.e. 'His car is red'. In Spanish, this would be written out as, 'Su coche es rojo'. There are many things going on here such as, did you remember the word for 'his'? Did you remember which 'to be' verb to use (the permanent or temporary) and did you remember the word for 'red'?

Next, how would you say, 'It is a red car'? In Spanish, it would be said as, 'Es un coche de rojo.' As the object/noun is a thing it uses the singular, formal 'you', as well as the 'he/she' conjugated verb ending. The 'car' would be 'it' and the verb ending for the verb 'ser' would be 'es'.

It might still seem a little confusing but after doing a couple of the sentences below, you should have a better understanding of the process of putting together nouns and adjectives in Spanish, especially when you throw a verb into the mix. Don’t rush. Look at each sentence carefully and then see if you can locate the correct Spanish answer that reflects what the given English sentence is saying.