Adjective and Noun Agreement in Romance and Germanic Languages

In English attributive and predicate adjectives are invariable. However, this is not the case in many other languages. Let us examine adjective and noun agreement in a number of Germanic and Romance languages.

In German and Dutch predicate adjectives are not inflected. For example, the German sentence My car is red is Mein Auto ist rot. Here the adjective red is uninflected. However, in the sentence I have a red car, the adjective is inflected. The sentence is Ich habe ein rotes Auto. In Dutch the sentences are Mijn auto is rood and Ik heb een rode auto.

In Danish, Norwegian and Swedish both attributive and predicate adjectives can be inflected. The sentence My car is red is Min bil är röd in Swedish, but My cars are red is Mina bilar är röda. The adjective agrees with the plural noun. In Danish and Norwegian the sentences are Min bil er rød and Mine biler er røde.

Spanish also inflects both attributive and predicate adjectives. The sentence Mi carro es rojo means My car is red. However, the sentence My cars are red is Mis carros son rojos. Here are the same sentences in Portuguese, Italian and French:

O meu carro é vermelho. Os meus carros são vermelhos.
La mia auto è rossa. Le mie auto sono rosse.
Ma voiture est rouge. Mes voitures sont rouges.

In Italian the word auto (car) is feminine. For this reason the adjectives for red are rossa and rosse. However, with masculine nouns, the forms are rosso and rossi. This is illustrated with the phrases i libro rosso (the red book) and i libri rossi (the red books).

Number and gender are important in not only Italian but also the other languages illustrated here. This is very different from English, which does not have gender. However, Old English did.

In many languages adjectives agree with nouns in gender and number. In German and Dutch, predicate adjectives are not inflected, but in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish they are. The Romance languages of Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian also inflect both predicate and attributive adjectives. This sets them apart from English.