Adjectives! So what are adjectives? Well, they are simply describing words, they describe things! Examples are Big, Small, Fat, Green, Cold etc etc. Adjectives are really important to learn because life would be so boring without them, imagine not being able to describe anything! So are you ready to get doing? अच्छा acchaa - great!

So first things first, in Hindi there are two different types of Adjectives; Inflecting Adjectives, and Non-Inflecting Adjectives. What does this mean? Well let me explain as we go though… 

Inflecting Adjectives

Inflecting adjectives are adjectives that inflect (obviously!). What does this mean? Well basically the adjectives must change to ‘agree’ with the gender noun it describes. This can be quite confusing, especially for English speakers since adjectives in English never inflect! (But you may have met inflecting adjectives if you’ve studied another language, such as French or Arabic etc).

It’s easy to spot Inflecting Adjectives because always end with the letter आ aa! 

Let me show you an example first and then I’ll explain the rules; the adjective छोटा chotaa means small or little. But, because it is an Inflecting Adjective the word changes slightly in different situations! We say, for example…

छोटा लड़का chotaa larkaa - A Small Boy

छोटे लड़के chote larke - Small Boys 

छोटी लड़की chotee larkee - A Small Girl   

छोटी लड़कियाँ chotee larkiyaan - Small Girls 

(Remember we learnt the Plurals for Nouns in Hindi in Lesson #39) Can you see here how the word छोटा chotaa changes slightly? Read through those examples again, can you see it now? We say छोटा chotaa for one boy but we say छोटे chote for more than on boy and छोटी chotee for girls, whether one or many!

The rules for this are… 

• The Adjective stays the same for the Masculine Singular 
• For the Masculine Plural case we drop the आ aa and add ए e
• For the Feminine case (Singular and Plural) we drop the आ aa and add ई ee

Got it? It’s a lot easier than you think! You just have to remember the Gender of the noun you are describing and then use the correct form of the adjective! 

Some other examples of adjectives include; बड़ा baraa - big, लंबा lambaa - long/tall, अच्छा acchaa - good, गंदा gandaa - dirty and many many more! So for example we’d say…

बड़े केले bare kele - Big Bananas
(Since 'Bananas’ is Masculine Plural!)

बड़ी बिल्ली baree billee - A Big Cat
(Since 'Cat’ is Feminine!) 

This is why it’s so important to know a noun’s Gender as we saw in Lesson #38! If you use the wrong inflection of the adjective then it’s simply wrong! So that’s Inflecting Adjectives done, ready for the other case? 

Non-Inflecting Adjectives

These adjectives never change when they are used, so they are a lot easier than Infecting Adjectives! Unfortunately they aren’t as common though. So, for example one Non-Inflecting Adjective is साफ़ saaf - clean. We can say…

साफ़ कमरा saaf kamaraa - A Clean Room  

साफ़ मेज़ saaf mez  - A Clean Table

Other examples of non-Inflecting adjectives include; सुन्दर sundar - beautiful,  गर्म garm - hot,  कठिन kathin - Difficult, etc etc.  For example…

आप सुन्दर हैं aap sundar hain - You are beautiful
(Remember the word हैं hain - Are from Lesson #22)

हिन्दी कठिन है hindee kathin hai - Hindi is difficult
(I hope you don’t find Hindi difficult, this is just an example!)

And you can really let your imagination run wild when creating sentences using these adjectives. So see if you can create your own long sentence in Hindi! Just be careful noting which adjective has to agree with which noun.

Back to Beginner’s Grammar.