What Is An Adjective?
Click on the video to dive right into adjectives for the Nominative case.
Ready for more? Today’s lesson is all about adjectives—words we use to describe people, things, and ideas. But let’s start at the beginning.
What in the world is an adjective, really?
Adjectives are all of the words that can be used to describe nouns or pronouns (people, things, or ideas).
What does that look like, though? Let’s check out a few examples:
- Das Haus ist groß. (The house is big.)
→ The adjective (groß) is describing the noun (Haus).
- Sie ist müde. (She is tired.)
→ The adjective (müde) is describing the pronoun (sie).
- Bobbi braucht ein neues Auto. (Bobbi needs a new car.)
→ The adjective (neues) is describing the noun (Auto).
Bobbi braucht ein neues Auto.
(Bobbi needs a new car.)
That might look simple at first glance, but German adjectives are a very complicated topic. We’re going to go through this carefully, with links going to separate, in-depth posts that explain things in more detail.
Where To Put Adjectives In A German Sentence
Finding the right spot for an adjective in a sentence is easy. You can treat German adjectives the same way as you would in English. That means...
1.) Adjectives go directly in front of the noun they’re describing.
- Bobbi will ein neues Auto kaufen. (Bobbi wants to buy a new car.)
- Sein altes Auto läuft nicht. (His old car doesn't run.)
2.) Adjectives can be placed after “to be” type verbs.
- Das Auto ist alt. (The car is old.)
- Das Wetter bleibt schön. (The weather will stay nice.)
3.) Adjectives can be strung together to modify a single object.
- Bald bekommt Bobbi ein schickes neues Auto. (Soon, Bobbi is going to get a fancy new car.)
- Dann macht er einen schönen langen Ausflug. (Then he'll go on a nice long trip.)
Bobbi macht Urlaub in seinem schicken neuen Auto.
(Bobbi is on vacation in his fancy new car.)
Now, if you look carefully, you might notice that some of our adjectives have unfamiliar endings. That’s because they're sensitive and deserve to be treated as individuals—there isn’t just one type of adjective, there are three.
What Grammatical Types of Adjectives Are There In German?
For German learners, knowing the 3 kinds of adjectives can be a critical lifeline.
Why?
Because not all kinds of adjectives are equally difficult to use! Two of these are especially helpful for students who are still working through all the more complicated rules. Introducing…
Predicative Adjectives
Predicative adjectives don't sit in front of the noun (like some others do). Instead, they come after a "state of being" verb.
In German, those verbs are "sein" (to be), "bleiben" (to stay), "werden" (to become), and "scheinen" (to seem).
That might sound complicated, but it works exactly the same way in English. Check it out:
- Bobbis Auto ist alt und klapprig. (Bobbi’s car is old and rickety.)
- Der Kaffee bleibt heiß in dem Thermosbecher. (The coffee will stay hot in the thermos.)
- Das Wetter wird warm. (The weather is getting warm.)
- Das scheint mir ungeheuer. (That seems spooky to me.)
Predicative adjectives don't change. They don’t get any special endings or any other kind of modification. But wait! These aren't the only easy kinds of adjectives.
Adverbial Adjectives
Adverbial adjectives are those that decided to identify as an adverb when they got up that morning. They can be used to describe verbs instead of just nouns. Let's look at a few examples:
- Bei der Arbeit läuft alles gut. (Everything is going well at work.)
- Die Arbeit beginnt früh am Morgen. (Work begins early in the morning.)
- Gogo findet seine Arbeit schwierig. (Gogo considers his job difficult.)
In terms of grammar, that means no special endings! We treat the adjective like an adverb. The only kind of adjective that gets complicated is the attributive adjective.
Attributive Adjectives
Finally, attributive adjectives are what I personally think of as the “fun” kind. This kind of adjective is placed right in front of a noun.
That means using lots of different adjective endings depending on the case, gender, plurality, and definiteness of the noun that we're talking about. It looks like this:
- Bobbi hat ein neues Auto. (Bobbi has a new car.)
- Er hat es mit einem teuren Kredit gekauft. (He bought it with an expensive loan.)
- Bobbi mochte schon immer schnelle Autos. (Bobbi has always liked fast cars.)
Looks a bit confusing, right? You can learn more in our post about all the different types of adjectives, and you can check out Anja's Videos on the endings for adjectives with the Nominative case here. Now, let's look a little more closely at adjective endings...
Do Adjectives Always Have Special Endings?
No! The only kind of adjective that actually has to use all of the endings (or "to be declined") is the attributive adjective—adjectives that always go right in front of a noun. For that, we have to use 5 different suffixes (word-endings). The suffixes are -e, -er, -es, -en and -em, and they account for gender, number, definiteness, case.
5 endings doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, watch what happens in these examples:
- Der kalte Kaffee schmeckt nicht. (The cold coffee doesn’t taste good.)
- Das ist ein kalter Kaffee. (That's a cold coffee.)
- Kalter Kaffee macht mich traurig. (Cold coffee makes me sad.)
- Mit kaltem Kaffee will ich nichts zu tun haben. (I don't want to have anything to do with cold coffee.)
- Er mag den Geschmack kalten Kaffees nicht. (He doesn't like the tase of cold coffee.)
Er mag den Geschmack kalten Kaffees nicht.
(He doesn't like the tase of cold coffee.)
Here, we used 4 of the 5 possible endings for just one noun—even though it's singular and masculine in all of the examples. If that seems confusing to you, you're not alone.
Each ending is used in several different (often unrelated) situations. Usually, we organize these endings into 3 categories for definite articles, indefinite articles, and adjectives with no article.
Exciting, right? There's no easy way to summarize this, so check out our full post on adjective endings!
If you prefer watching videos, we've got you covered.
How Adjectives Are Made
Adjectives aren't born, they're made! Ok, that's not true for all adjectives, but it is for many. Sometimes we adapt them from other parts of speech like nouns or verbs, and sometimes we modify adjectives that already exist to change their meaning.
Forming German Adjectives From Other Parts Of Speech
When we see a really descriptive noun or verb (or any other kind of word, really) sometimes we just have to turn it into an adjective. We make it adjectival. Adjectivish. Adjectivous. Adjectivial, even, perhaps.
In German, we can do this by adding the right kind of ending to the word. A few examples look like this.
- laufen (to run) → laufend (running)
- essen (to eat) → essbar (edible)
- Hunger (hunger) → hungrig (hungry)
- Amerikaner (American [n.]) → amerikanisch (American [adj.])
Of course, not just any suffix is the right suffix. Some of them only go with some kinds of words, while others modify meanings in very specific ways.
We go over them, and how to use them, in our post about adjective formation.
Compound Adjectives
A common stereotype about German is that we have a word for everything. It’s called "alles" (everything).
Just kidding, but we do have a lot of flexibility to change and to make up new words. Adjectives can be combined with other words (or bits of words) to make more specific "compound" adjectives. They can look like this:
- groß (large) → übergroß (oversized)
- möglich (possible) → unmöglich (impossible)
- blau (blue) → himmelblau (sky-blue)
- warm (warm) → lauwarm (lukewarm)
Looks familiar, right? That's because English has many words that were formed the same way.
For a more thorough look at how you can modify and make compound adjectives in German, take a look at our post about making adjectives in German.
Comparative And Superlative Adjectives
The comparative is how we express that something is greater or more than something else – saying how something relates to something else.
For example:
- Heute ist das Wetter wärmer als gestern. (Today, the weather is warmer than yesterday.)
The superlative is the most extreme form – explaining how something relates to all things, when something is the most or the greatest.
- Im Juli war das Wetter am wärmsten. (The weather was at its warmest in July.)
To make comparative and superlative forms for adjectives, we just add an umlaut and an ending to the adjective (-er for comparative, and -ste for superlative). Then, we add the same adjective-endings as would need for any other adjective.
- Bobbi entschied sich für einen billigeren Wagen. (Bobbi decided on a cheaper car.)
- Den billigsten Urlaub macht man Zuhause. (The cheapest vacation is taken at home.)
Is that everything? No, but you can learn the rest in our post about comparatives!
Adjectives With Prepositions
Some adjectives go with specific prepositions (those are words like von, mit, auf etc...), or they can be combined with different prepositions to change their meaning.
Sounds crazy, right? Don't worry, we do the same thing in English.
For example, you might be "satisfied with your work". “With” tells us that some kind of object is coming next. In German, we do the same thing. For example:
- Du bist zufrieden mit deiner Arbeit. (You are satisfied with your work.)
- Katie ist sauer auf Gogo. (Katie is mad at Gogo.)
- Sie ist genervt von seiner lauten Musik. (She is annoyed by his loud music.)
- Sie ist zufrieden mit ihrer Arbeit. (She is satisfied with her work.)
If we look at the second and third examples, we can see that there's more to it as well. That's because of the prepositions "von" and “mit”. They always go with a Dative object, so the articles "ihrer" and "seiner" that follow them have to be in their Dative form.
Andy ist süchtig nach lauter Musik.
(Andy is addicted to loud music.)
Familiar? Yes. Easy? Not as much. There are many combinations of adjectives, prepositions, and matching cases.
To go over those, I’m going to point you to my other post 30 Important Adjectives and Prepositions.
What About Irregular Adjectives?
Whew, almost there! That was a lot of stuff to remember about adjectives, and this is only the overview! But never fear, there is always just one more thing. The exceptions. Just kidding! Those are specifically about comparative adjectives, so you you can find them in another post over here.
Congratulations! You’ve made it all the way to the end of the overview! Make sure to check out the more thorough posts about German adjectives.
Want to see how much you've learned? Test your knowledge with this quiz we made for you. It will take no more than … 5 minutes.
