Adjectives

What would we do without adjectives? Our conversations would get boring really fast if we couldn't talk about big dogs or ugly cats or whatever. Using them in English is very simple - we just plop them in place in a sentence and go. Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated in German. After you start studying how to use German adjectives, you'll probably have a few choice adjectives in mind for these adjectives! (sorry - should've given an alert for that lame joke!)

Declination of Adjectives

In the prior section the declination of the definite articles der, die, das and indefinite article ein and the article-type der-words and ein-words were covered. Now let's talk about adjectives. Like the articles, German adjectives must be properly declined (i.e. an appropriate ending added to the core word) in order to be used in a grammatically correct fashion. The declination of adjectives is very similar and consistent to how the articles are declined, but with some added complexity (naturally!). In fact, remembering how to decline German adjectives in all of their usage is quite possibly the most challenging characteristic of the entire language!

Essentially, the declination of an adjective is determined by whether or not it is preceded by an article or not. Since there are two sets of articles (definite and indefinite) this means that there are three ways (and thus three wonderful tables!) that one must remember for declining adjectives. Fortunately, there is some simplification in that when preceding an adjective, der words act like definite articles and ein words act like indefinite articles. Furthermore, many of the endings are the same for all three cases. The three tables below show the adjective alt (old) being declined.

Whew! If you have a positronic brain then remembering these should be cake. However, if you're like me and most of the rest of the world, only with lots of practice will you stand a chance of talking about old dogs, cats, and kids correctly. Notice, though, that there is something of a pattern in that the unpreceded adjectives are almost the same as the definite article declinations (rese-nese-mrmn-nrnr). But if you get flustered while speaking, just use the -en ending. After all, since it is used on 26 of the 48 possible endings, you at least have better than even odds (54%) of being right!

Why does German have this kind of complexity with adjectives? Well, the main reason is grounded in the noun genders. Typically the article (or the adjective if there is no article) must uniquely indicate the gender and case of the noun in context. Thus, for the adjectives preceded by definite articles or der-words, the endings are either -e or -en.

Big, Bigger, and Biggest

Just like in English, German has three degrees of power you can use with a base adjective: the base form (also called the positive), the comparative, and the superlative. The comparative expresses more of the base; the superlative more still. Or to put it more simply, just think of English examples like big/bigger/biggest, small/smaller/smallest and so on.

Because German and English evolved from the same root dialects, many elements are identical or at least very similar. This is true with adjective grammar. The basic rule in German for beefing up adjectives is exactly the same as in English: add -er for the comparative and add -est for the superlative. But naturally there are several exceptions to this rule! Several adjectives are irregular in form, as shown in the following table.

Note that many of these irregular adjectives are also irregular in English, like good/better/best and many/more/most. Also, most one-syllable German adjectives that have a stem vowel a, o, or u add an umlaut and thus have a pronunciation change in the comparative and superlative.

Adjectives as Nouns

(undone)

Participles as Adjectives

(undone)

Other Adjective Topics

(undone)

Summary