Adjectives in Arabic

What is an adjective?

An adjective is a word that qualifies a noun. Below are some adjectives:

Adjectives (alone)

Placement & Agreement

Unlike in English, an adjective comes after the noun it qualifies. They both agree in gender, number, and definiteness, i.e, they are both either definite or indefinite. They also agree in declension (final vowel; this will be explained later). Now let us use each adjective above to qualify a noun.

Adjectives (with the nouns they qualify)

NOTE
The adjective always comes after the noun, and they both share the same vowel on their last letter.

The nouns in the above examples are all indefinite (and so are the adjectives). To render the nouns definite, the definite article is added to them, and since an adjective must be definite or indefinite just like its noun, the definite article is added to the adjectives as well. See below:

Adjectives (which qualify definite nouns)

Note the repetition of the definite article

Summary

An Adjective:

• comes after the noun it qualifies
• agrees with the noun in gender and number
• is definite only if the noun is definite
• ends with the same vowel as the noun

Vocabulary

English	Arabic
hardworking	مُجْتَهِـدٌ
old/big	كـَبـِيْرٌ
ancient	قـَدِيْمٌ
clean	نَظِيْفٌ
dirty	وَسِخٌ

Exercise

Try to qualify each noun you learnt with an adjective from above. Pay close attention to (in)definiteness of both the noun and the adjective.