Before we start this lesson on French adjectives, let’s make sure you first completely understand what adjectives (and adverbs) are and the role they play in sentences.
First, adjectives describe nouns (people, places, ideas, things).
Examples: A green dress; a happy boy; a loud truck.
Side note: there’s a few specific types of adjective—articles, like “a” and “this”—that we discuss in a separate articles and determiners post. We’ll discuss all the other adjectives in this lesson.
Second, adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.
Examples: She spoke happily; a very happy boy; a truck honking loudly.
French Adjectives’ location in sentences
In modern English, adjectives always go in front of the noun. You never have a “pipe copper” or a “pie apple.”
In French, adjectives USUALLY go AFTER the noun.
Une voiture grise. (Literally, “A car gray.”)
Un livre lourd. (Literally, “A book heavy.”)
However, a few common French adjectives go in front of the noun instead of after it.
Exceptions (French adjectives that go IN FRONT OF the noun)
A simple acronym to remember these adjectives is BANGS, which stands for Beauty, Age, Goodness, Number and Size.
However, realize that this exception to the rule doesn’t apply to ALL adjectives that fall into one of the BANGS categories; just the specific common adjectives on the table.
Here are the “exception” adjectives:
| Beauty | beau/belle joli/jolie |
| Age | vieux/vielle jeune nouveau/nouvelle |
| Number | any number or numbering position, such as deux or deuxième |
| Goodness | bon/bonne mal/mauvais |
| Size | grand/grande petit/petite |
If an adjective isn’t on this list, assume it goes after the noun it is modifying in French.
Masculine, feminine and plural in French adjectives
French adjectives differ from adjectives in English in one other major way: they take slightly different forms depending on whether the noun they’re modifying is masculine, feminine, or plural.
The “usual” rule is to add an -e to the end to make an adjective feminine, and/or an -s to to make the adjective plural. Here’s an example with the adjective bleu, below:
Un livre bleu; une jupe bleue; les livres bleus; les jupes bleues.
Feminine Adjective Form Patterns
Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, just like most grammar rules in any language. Most exceptions have to do with the feminine form not “working” if just an e was added on. The feminine form might create a syllable pattern not used in French, the sound would be too insubstantial, or it would just plain “sound bad” (thinking about how syllables sound together is important in French pronunciation).
Luckily, there are patterns that many French irregular adjectives follow, depending on their ending in the masculine form. Here are some of the most common patterns for adjectives that change between the masculine and feminine forms (with an example adjective in parenthesis):
| Masculine Form Ending | Feminine Form Ending |
| -c (blanc) | -che (blanche) |
| -er (premier) | -ère (première) |
| -et (complet) | -ète (complète) |
| -eur (heureux) | -euse (heureuse) |
| -f (neuf) | -ve (neuve) |
| -eau (personnel) | -elle (personelle) |
| -on (bon) | -onne (bonne) |
Plural Adjective Form Patterns
Plural adjectives take the masculine form of the adjective + plural, unless you know that all the items that the adjective is referring to are feminine. (Then it takes the feminine form + plural.)
Irregular plural forms of French adjectives are not common, but they are important to learn because many of these adjectives are common words:
| Masculine Singular | Feminine Singular | Masculine Plural | Feminine Plural |
| nouveau | nouvelle | nouveaux | nouvelles |
| beau | belle | beaux | belles |
| vieux | vielle | vieux | vielles |
| mou | molle | mous | molles |
| fou | folle | fous | folles |
Alternate masculine adjective forms before vowels
There’s one more important French adjective grammar rule to know that applies to the same irregular plural verbs listed above.
When the masculine form of an adjective ends in a vowel or vowel sound, AND the following word begins with a vowel (or h, which is usually silent in French) the adjective needs to change slightly. You don’t ever want to hear two vowel sounds next to each other in French (as would happen if you said un beau homme).
In these cases, you take the feminine form of the word (which ends in -lle) and alter it to just end in -l instead.
Un beau garçon, but un bel homme
Un vieux camion, but un vieil homme.
Next Steps
This post covered all the most important parts of French adjectives that you need to know. Next up, try learning about French adverbs!
