ADJECTIVES — Aggettivi

This page is divided into 4 sections dealing with:

• regular adjectives
• irregular adjectives
• possessive adjectives
• comparative and superlative adjectives

 1. REGULAR ADJECTIVES  

Adjectives in Italian must match the noun they describe in gender and number.

This means that if the noun is feminine, the adjective must be feminine, and
if the noun is plural, the adjective must be plural.

Gender means making the adjective masculine or feminine to agree with the noun.
Number means making the adjective singular or plural to agree with the noun.

Adjectives make their plurals in the same way that nouns make their plurals, so go back and revise the page about nouns if you are not sure.

In Italian, adjectives usually come after the noun they are describing but a few always stand before their noun; these are as follows:

1. possessive adjectives (my, your, his/her etc.) which are dealt with below.
2. demonstrative adjectives (this/that) also dealt with below.
3. the adjectives "molto" (much) and "troppo" (too much)
4. some adjectives denoting size can come before or after their noun.

In dictionaries, adjectives are always given in the masculine singular and this may not be the form in which you need the adjective and you may have to change it.

There are only 3 irregular adjectives which you need to know; they are dealt with at the end of this page.

Italian adjectives are of two basic types: piccolo and grande — i.e. they either end in -o or they end in -e.

If the adjective ends in -o, it has four possible endlings: piccolo (masc. sing.) piccola (fem. sing.)

Now compare an adjective that ends in -e

This type of adjective has no feminine form; it only has a plural form which is both masculine and feminine.

Spelling: Be careful when changing some adjectives because you may need to make a spelling change to preserve the sound of the consonant before the ending: for example:

The last adjective above "drammatico" shows you something which regularly happens with adjectives ending in "-ico", — i.e.the masculine plural is -ici while the feminine plural is -iche.
Similarly, adjectives ending in "-igo" have the masculine plural -igi, and the feminine plural -ighe.

Remember the rules for making nouns and adjectives plural:

Now try a couple of exercises to see if you have mastered the idea of plurals of nouns and agreement of adjectives:

Exercise 1 : Change the following phrases into the plural. If you have not met the definite article yet, don't try to make the first word in each phrase plural. If you need to revise the article, do that before you try this exercise.

1. la bella ragazza
2. il nuovo metodo
3. il bravo studente
4. il vecchio amico scozzese
5. il giovane ragazzo
6. la prima lezione francese
7. il formaggio francese
8. lo studente tedesco
9. il nuovo sport popolare
10. la grande città industriale
11. il vino magnifico italiano
12. l'attore famoso.

To check your answers click here.

Exercise 2 Change the following phrases into the plural. Be careful about the spelling of some of the adjectives in the plural. You don't need to know the definite article for this exercise.

1. capello lungo e biondo
2. occhio castano e lucido
3. tifoso fanatico
4. via larga
5. vecchia fiaba fantastica
6. giacca sporca
7. strada lunga e serpeggiante
8. famiglia ricca e importante
9. giovane americano ricco
10. esercizio grammaticale

To check your answers click here.

2. IRREGULAR ADJECTIVES  

There are only 3 irregular adjectives:

1. buono (good)
2. bello (beautiful, nice)
3. quello (that)

When these adjectives are put in front of their noun, they follow their own rules:

1. buono has two forms for the masculine singular, so it looks like this:

Use the form buon where you would use the indefinite article un — i.e. before a masculine noun beginning with a vowel or consonant or most groups of consonants BUT
use buono where you would use the indefinite article uno — i.e. before a masculine noun beginning with z or s+consonant.
You'll see that the rest of this adjective is normal.

2. bello and quello have all the possible forms of the word del (the partitive article)
  If you have not met the word del yet go and study it now because these two adjectives follow the same pattern and you need to know it. Go to the page on the Partitive Article.

For those of you who have already met the Partitive Article, here are all the possible forms of bello and quello:

Exercise 4. Insert the correct part of buono, bello or quello in these phrases:

1. una [buono] idea.
2. in [quello] casa, con [quello][bello] giardino.
3. un [bello] parco.
4. [quello][bello] appartamento.
5. [bello] isola
6. in [quello] zona di [quello] piccolo paese.
7. un [buono]strumento].
8. un [buono] amico.
9. una [buono] amica.
10. [quello] [buono] vino.

To check your answers click here.

Exercise 5: Turn all the phrases in Exercise 3 into the plural.

To check your answers click here.

3. POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES: — my, your, his, her, our, their.

IMPORTANT RULE: In Italian you must put the definite article in front of these adjectives. Make yourself familiar with the table below:

Pay particular attention to the boxes which have been given a different colour and notice 2 things:

1. mio, tuo and suo behave like normal adjectives except in the masculine plural.
2. loro does not make any changes at all, it is invariable.

REMEMBER! These adjectives require the definite article UNLESS you are referring to members of the family, when they are not used.

REMEMBER too, they take the gender of the noun following them, not the gender of the possessor.

Exercise 3: Translate the following phrases which use possessive adjectives into Italian:

1. my house
2. your name
3. my mother
4. our friends
5. his car
6. her father
7. their holidays
8. his father
9. my parents
10. her eyes
11. their tickets
12. our family

To check your answers click here.

4. COMPARATIVE and SUPERLATIVE and STRUCTURES.

Very basically, “comparative” adjectives are words like “taller”, older”, “more intelligent”.

“Superlative” adjectives are words like “tallest”, “oldest”, “ most intelligent”.

In Italian there is no equivalent to the English suffixes -er and -est; instead, Italian uses the adverb più = more.

COMPARATIVES: — Comparative of Inequality:

1. Examine carefully the following sentences:

1. Maria is tall. = Maria è alta.
2. Angela is taller. = Angela è più alta.
3. Angela is taller than Maria = Angela è più alta di Maria

Sentence 3 show a structure called the “comparative of inequality”. Use più with the adjective to make the comparative form, and di to translate the English word than.
Use it whenever you want to say someone or something is bigger than/ older than/ better than/ faster than/ someone or something else.

Now have a careful look at the following sentences, which show another type of comparison:
1. Marco is intelligent = Marco è intelligente.
2. Giorgio is less intelligent. = Giorgio è meno intelligente.
3. Giorgio is less intelligent than Marco = Giorgio è meno intelligente di Marco.

Sentence 3 shows another type of “comparative of inequality” — when you want to say someone/something is less old/interesting/exciting than someone/something else; use meno for the English word less and di to translate the English word than.

Comparative of Equality:

This is when you say something like “Edinburgh is as lively as Glasgow”, or “Hearts are as good as Hibs”

Here is how you would say that in Italian:
1. Edinburgh is as lively as Glasgow = Edimburgo è così vivace come Glasgow.
2. Hearts are as good as Hibs = Gli Hearts sono così bravi come gli Hibs.

Alternatively, you can express as .....as by using tanto ...... quanto (like the correlative construction in Latin).
So you could translate the two sentences above this way:

1. Edinburgh is as lively as Glasgow = Edimburgo è tanto vivace quanto Glasgow.
2. Hearts are as good as Hibs = Gli Hearts sono tanto bravi quanto gli Hibs.

SUPERLATIVES.

In English we can use the suffix -est to create the superlative form of the adjective, producing words like oldest, weakest, fastest etc.
There is no equivalent in Italian. Instead you use the definite article (il/la/i/le) plus più or meno and the adjective.

Some examples should make this clear. Read carefully the following English sentences and their translation into Italian:

1. The most beautiful churches in Tuscany are in Florence.
    = Le chiese più belle della Toscana sono a Firenze.

2. The oldest houses in the city are being restored.
   = Le case più vecchie della città sono in restauro.

3. Milan is the richest city in the country.
  =  Milano è la città più ricca del Paese.

4. They are the fastest cars in the world.
   = Sono le macchine più veloci del mondo.

N.B. Notice how, in Italian, the phrases “in Tuscany”, “in the city” etc. are translated with the preposition di.

THE ABSOLUTE SUPERLATIVE

This is the grand name for the suffix -issimo (which you must have seen many times if you are a musician).
To make it, drop the final vowel of the simple adjective and add -issimo, e.g.:
1. bello (beautiful) — bellissimo (very beautiful) or you could say molto bello
2. veloce (fast) ——— velocissimo (very fast) or you could say molto veloce

Be careful! sometimes you will have to insert the letter h to preserve the sound of the consonant; e.g.:
1. lungo (long) — lunghissimo (very long) = molto lungo
2. simpatico (nice) — simpatichissimo (very nice) = molto simpatico
3. fresco (fresh) — freschissimo (very fresh) = molto fresco

Use this form of the word if you want to say, for example:

1. Venice is a very beautiful city.
   = Venezia è una città bellissima.

2. Italian women are always very elegant.
   = Le donne italiane sono sempre elegantissime.

Finally, a few adjectives have kept their comparative and superlative forms from Latin:

However, you can also say più buono and il più buono and buonissimo, and similarly with the others in the table.

The last structure you should know is how you say in Italian phrases like “as long as possible” , “as warm as possible”

In Italian the equivalent is: “il più lungo possibile” and “il più caldo possibile”.

Return to the Grammar Index Page.