Guide to Spanish adjectives (Part 1).

The top 10 Spanish adjectives

Here’s Hablarama’s unofficial list of the top ten Spanish adjectives:

• Bien – good/well/OK
• Bueno – good/nice
• malo – bad
• grande – big
• pequeño – small
• caro – expensive
• barato – cheap
• nuevo – new
• viejo – old
• fantástico – fantastic

Of these, the adjective you’ll probably hear most often is ‘bien‘:

• ¿Estás bien?
  Are you OK?
• No está bien.
  It’s not good.
• No estoy bien.
  I’m not well.

Let’s have a look at phrases with those other common adjectives:

• ¿Has comprado un coche nuevo?
  Have you bought a new car?
• Nuestra casa es muy grande.
  Our house is very big.
• El perro es muy viejo.
  The dog is very old.
• Ha sido un día fantástico.
  It’s been a fantastic day.

After the noun

When an adjective is used directly with a noun then the adjectives are normally place AFTER the noun. However, there are exceptions to this rule which we look at in more advanced classes.

Correcto: Ha sido un día fantástico.
Incorrecto: Ha sido un fantástico día.

Feminine and Masculine forms.

Most Spanish adjectives have feminine and masculine forms.  The adjectives which end in ‘o’ are the masculine forms, and this ‘o’ becomes an ‘a’ in the corresponding feminine form. You must use the form which corresponds to the gender of the noun you are describing: feminine adjectives with feminine nouns and masculine adjectives with masculine nouns.

Here are some common masculine and feminine adjectives side-by-side:

• bueno – buena
• malo – mala
• caro – cara
• barato – barata
• pequeño – pequeña

Example phrases:

• Es una casa pequeña.
  It’s a small house.
• La bicicleta es muy cara.
  The bicycle is very expensive.
• Buscamos una habitación barata.
  We’re looking for a cheap room.

Shorter forms before masculine nouns

Malo and Bueno have shorter forms which can be used before masculine nouns.

• Han hecho un mal partido.
  They’ve had a bad game.
• Hemos tenido un buen día.
  We’ve had a good day. 

If you were wondering, these two phrases use the pretérito perfecto compuesto tense, which corresponds to the English present perfect.

Basic Spanish Course

If you are just getting started with the Spanish language then take a look at our Basic Spanish course.  Written by a very experienced bilingual teacher, it’s full of the practical, real-life phrases which you can start to use straightaway.