Adjective Agreement

French nouns have a personality. They are either masculine or feminine. They are also either alone (singular) or in a group (plural). Adjectives are team players. They change their endings to support the noun. Most of the time, you just add an e for feminine and an s for plural. It sounds simple, right? It mostly is! However, the tricky part is that many of these changes are silent. You might write verte instead of vert, but they often sound very similar. This is why writing practice is your best friend here. Think of it like a grammar traffic light. The noun gives the signal, and the adjective follows the rules to keep the sentence moving smoothly.

1. 1To master the look of your adjectives, follow these four basic steps:
2. 2Start with the Masculine Singular form. This is the "default" version you find in the dictionary (e.g., grand).
3. 3To make it Feminine Singular, add an e to the end (grande).
4. 4To make it Masculine Plural, add an s to the end (grands).
5. 5To make it Feminine Plural, add es to the end (grandes).
6. 6But wait, there are some "rebel" patterns you should know:
7. 7If the masculine ends in e, don't add another one! facile stays facile for both genders.
8. 8If it ends in eux, the feminine becomes euse. Heureux (happy) becomes heureuse.
9. 9If it ends in f, the feminine becomes ve. Sportif becomes sportive.
10. 10If it ends in er, it becomes ère. Cher (expensive) becomes chère.

You need this rule every single time you describe something.

• Ordering food: If you want a "small salad," you say une petite salade. Since salade is feminine, petit needs that e.
• Job interviews: If you are describing yourself as "serious," a man says Je suis sérieux and a woman says Je suis sérieuse.
• Asking directions: Looking for the "big cathedrals"? You’ll ask for les grandes cathédrales.
• Social media: Posting about your "new friends"? Use mes nouveaux amis or mes nouvelles amies depending on who is in the photo.

There are a few moments where adjectives decide to be stubborn and stay exactly the same.

• Invariable colors: Some colors based on real objects never change. Marron (chestnut/brown) and orange are the most common. You can have des chaussures marron (brown shoes) and the adjective doesn't get an s.
• Compound colors: If you use two words for a color, like bleu marine (navy blue), they don't change.
• Adverbs: Sometimes words look like adjectives but act like adverbs. In the phrase Elle parle fort (She speaks loudly), fort doesn't change because it describes the *speaking*, not the woman.

The most common slip-up is the "Gender Takeover." If you have a group of 99 women and 1 man, the whole group uses the masculine plural. It feels unfair, I know! But in French grammar, the masculine is the "default" for mixed groups.

• Mistake: Les filles et les garçons sont contentes.
• Correction: Les filles et les garçons sont contents.

Another mistake is forgetting the e on adjectives that end in a consonant. In petit, the t is silent. In petite, you actually pronounce the t. If you forget the e, you might accidentally change the sound of the word!

In English, we say "The tall boy" and "The tall girls." The word "tall" is a rock; it never moves. In Spanish, you might be used to o and a endings (chico alto / chica alta). French is very similar to Spanish in this regard, but the endings are different. While Spanish uses o, French often uses nothing (the consonant) for masculine. While Spanish uses a, French uses e. If you've studied other Romance languages, you'll find the logic familiar, but the "spelling" is uniquely French.