The 3 Main Types Of German Adjectives – With Exercises 

The 3 Main Types Of German Adjectives

Check out the video above to see Anja's primer on adjective endings for adjectives in the Nominative.

You’re back to learn more about adjectives? Perfect! Today, we’re going to look at the three grammatical types of German adjectives. As we learned in the overview, those are called predicative, adverbial, and attributive adjectives.

As a German learner, understanding these adjective types can be a minty fresh life saver! Native speakers normally do their best to sleep through this part of grammar-class as kids. That's not going to be us, though!

Ready? Go!

Predicative Adjectives

The simplest way to use an adjective is as a "predicative adjective". This type of adjective is a follower, not a leader. It always comes after a verb that describes a state of being. Those verbs are:

• sein (to be)
• bleiben (to stay)
• werden (to become) 
• scheinen (to seem)

Let’s do some examples!

• Bobbis Auto ist alt. (Bobbi’s car is old.)
• Sein Auto bleibt alt. (His car will stay old.)
• Jetzt wird das Auto heiß. (Now, the car is getting hot.)
• Das scheint Bobbi ungeheuer. (That seems spooky to Bobbi.)

Looking at these, you might notice a few things. All of the sentences are short and simple. There are also no new endings, and it might even look familiar. That’s because English does the same thing.

If we want to describe the weather, we would say “The weather is nice”. "Nice" is describing the weather, but it’s really attached to the verb “is”. In German, that's very important, because of a technicality.

The adjective is describing a verb. But... that's what adverbs do! So, it works like an adverb would… without adjective endings.

For a German learner who is still starting out, this is good news. It means that you can start using predicative adjectives without having to worry about special endings. 

Mann, mein Auto ist alt.

(Oh man, my car is old.)

Adverbial Adjectives

Another awesome type of adjective that’s very similar is an "adverbial adjective". 

An adverbial adjective comes after a verb other than sein, bleiben, and werden. That means they're adjectives that are acting like adverbs. They might be adjectives, but we’re using them to describe verbs.

Let’s check out a few examples!

• Pietro geht schnell nach Hause. (Pietro is going home quickly.)
• Der Motor brummt laut. (The motor is humming loudly.)
• Das Essen schmeckt gut. (The meal tastes good.)

Just like before, the adjectives here don’t need to be modified at all. 

This makes them very easy to use. It helps us to express more complicated ideas without all of the complicated rules on modifying the endings. 

Lasst mich nur ganz schnell meinen Kiefer aufheben.

Attributive Adjectives

Attributive adjectives follow all the rules, and do all the things a good and proper adjective is expected to do in German. Unlike their delinquent siblings, they describe nouns. 

Usually, a noun’s article will tell us what the case, plurality and gender of that noun is. Sometimes,

• the article is definite (der, die, das, etc…), or
• the article is indefinite (ein, eine). And sometimes
• there is no article. Then the adjective has to take over with a special ending!

Let's check out an example each:

• Der warme Tee ist gesund. (The warm tea is healthy.)
• Ein warmer Tee ist gesund. (A warm tea is healthy.)
• Warmer Tee ist gesund. (Warm tea is healthy.)

See that? Depending on the type of article, the adjective-ending has to be modified differently. Accordingly, there are 3 completely different sets of adjective endings.

Ok, ok, don’t worry. It’s going to be alright. We’re not looking at all of the possible endings (and special bonus exceptions!) today. For that, we have our post "German Adjective Declensions Made Simple".

Today, we’re just going to look at a few examples of different endings.

Definite Article

• Bobbi steigt in das neue Auto und fährt zu dem schönen Café. (Bobbi gets into the new car, and drives to the nice cafe.)
• Der heiße Kaffee ist noch untrinkbar. (The hot coffee is still undrinkable.)
• Katie spielt im Café etwas auf der kleinen Ukulele. (Katie plays something on the little ukulele in the café.)

When the definite article is there to clearly tell us what case, plurality and gender we’re dealing with, adjectives always end in either -e or -en.  Easy-peasy, right?

Katie spielt etwas auf der kleinen Ukulele.

(Katie plays something on the little ukulele.)

Indefinite Article

Indefinite articles don’t really tell us as much, so the adjective does a little more work. For that, we get 4 different endings (-e, -er, -es, and -en).

• Wir haben eine große Aufgabe vor uns. (We have a great task ahead of us.)
• Ein starker Kaffee bringt Gogo wieder auf Trapp. (A strong coffee will get Gogo back on track.)
• Katie fragt, warum Gogo nicht schon früher einen starken Kaffee getrunken hat. (Katie asks why Gogo didn’t have a strong coffee sooner.)
• Gogo hat jetzt ein neues Ziel: eine gute Tasse Kaffee vor großen Aufgaben. (Gogo has a new goal: a good cup of coffee before a new tasks.)

Schaut her, wir haben ein neues Auto!

No Article

When the article goes on vacation, the adjective has to do more work. Here we get a total of 5 different endings (-e, -er, -es, and -en, -em).

• Schöne neue Autos waren zu teuer für Bobbi. (Nice new cars were too expensive for Bobbi.)
• Bobbi versteht nichts von guten Motoren. (Bobbi doesn’t know anything about good engines.)
• Guter Motor sucht neues Auto. (Good engine is looking for new car.)
• Bobbi sitzt im gebrauchten Auto mit gutem Motor. (Bobbi is sitting in the second-hand car with a good engine.)

Gogo versteht nichts von guter Musik.

(Gogo doesn’t appreciate good Music.)

Alright beautiful learner, are you ready for the real thing? Check out our full breakdown of adjective endings (that’s declensions, technically) in our post about German adjective declensions.

Irregular Adjectives / Sneaky Exceptions

There are, of course, always other types of German adjectives. We can call this category “miscellaneous”. As with everything else, adjectives have their share of sneaky anarchists that don’t follow the rules.

Adjectives Without Declensions

Some adjectives are rebels and stay exactly the same no matter where they are in the sentence, or what type of word they might be modifying. 

The most common examples are “super” and “extra”, but also a few colors like “lila” and “rosa”. For example:

• Gogo braucht heute eine extra Tasse Kaffee. (Gogo needs an extra cup of coffee today.)
• Katie gibt ihm einen lila Becher. (Katie is giving a purple mug to him.)
• Jetzt hat Gogo wieder eine super Laune. (Now Gogo is back in a very good mood.)

Meine Damen, wie gefällt euch meine rosa Brille?

(Ladies, how do you like my pink glasses?)

German Adjectives With Irregular Comparative Forms

Some adjectives mostly play by the rules, but they need a bit of extra attention. We introduced comparative forms in the overview post, and you’ll be able to see that the following are a little different.

teuer (expensive) - teurer (more expensive) - am teuersten (most expensive)

• Bobbis erstes Auto war nicht teuer. (Bobbi's first car wasn't expensive.)
• Das neue Auto ist teurer als sein altes. (The new car is more expensive than his old one.)
• Das teuerste Auto war sein BMW. (The most expensive car was his BMW.)

According to the rules, "teuer" should become “teuerer”, but the -e- in front of the -r- is deleted in the comparative form, and the same happens when we decline "teuer": 

• Das ist ein teures Auto. (That's an expensive car).

groß (big) - größer (bigger) - am größten (biggest)

• Du hast große Füße. (You have big feet.) 
• Vielleicht brauchst du jetzt größere Schuhe als letztes Jahr? (Maybe you need bigger shoes than last year?)   
• Das sind die größten Schuhe aller Zeiten. (These are the biggest shoes of all time.)

Instead of using the superlative ending -esten that usually comes after s-sounds, this adjective just uses the ending -ten in its superlative form.

hoch (tall/high) - höher (taller/higher) - am höchsten (tallest/highest)

• Der Turm scheint sehr hoch. (The tower seems very tall.)
• Der Fernsehturm ist höher als die anderen Gebäude am Alexanderplatz. (The Fernsehturm is taller than the other buildings at Alexanderplatz.)
• Das höchste Restaurant in Berlin ist das im Fernsehturm. (Of all the restaurants in Berlin, the one in the Fernsehturm is the tallest.)

→ Instead of just gaining an umlaut, “hoch” also loses the -c-in the comparative form. Of course, it comes back in the superlative form, though.

Additional exception:

• Das ist ein hoher Turm. (This is a tall tower.)

→ Equally, the attributive adjective "hoch" drops the -c- in its declined form (ein hoher Turm, eine hohe Kathedrale, ein hohes Schloss - a tall tower, a tall cathedral, a tall castle). However, we do not add an umlaut to the basic form.

Vielleicht bräuchte ich doch größere Schuhe?

(Maybe I do need bigger shoes?)

Extra Irregular Types Of German Adjectives

Lastly, we have the most unique characters among all German adjectives. These just threw all the rules out the window, and decided to swap in entirely different root forms.

gut (good) - besser (better) - am besten (best)

• Das ist guter Tee. (This is good tea.) 
• Kaffee schmeckt besser. (Coffee tastes better.)
• Der Arzt behauptet aber, dass die beste Flüssigkeit Wasser ist. (The doctor claims that the best liquid is water, though.)

viel (much) - mehr (more) - am meisten (the most)

• Bobbi hat viel gearbeitet. (Bobbi has worked a lot.)
• Er hat viele E-Mails geschrieben. (He wrote many emails.)
• Er muss heute noch mehr arbeiten. (He needs to work even more today.)
• Für mehr Arbeit bekommt er mehr Geld. (For more work, he gets more money.)
• Die meiste Arbeit hat er am Wochenende. (He has the most work on the weekends.)

→ While "viel" and "meiste" can change their endings (viele E-Mails, die meiste Arbeit), "mehr" never takes a special ending. Good to know, right?

nah (close) - näher (closer) - am nächsten (closest)

• Mein Vater ist mir nah. (My father and I are close.)
• Meine Mutter ist mir näher.  (My mother and I are closer.)
• Meine nächsten Verwandten leben in Deutschland. (My closest relatives live in Germany.)

→ The comparative form of "nah" takes an umlaut (näher). Additionally, the superlative form adds a -c- before the -h- (nächsten).

In case you've noticed: In the above examples over the last few paragraphs, we used a mix of all three types of adjectives 😉

Whew! Alright! Those were the 3 main types of German adjectives, plus a handful of extra special ones. Congratulations! 

You want more? Let’s go! If you want to learn more about adjectives, check out some of our other posts on the subject over here!

Are you ready to test what you've learned? Try our Quiz!

Quiz: The 3 Main Types Of German Adjectives