German Adjectives

This page contains a table including the following: German Adjectives and adverbs. Try to memorize the way they're used because they're very important in communication, and might be very helpful to convey your most important expressions. Make sure to check our Learn German page, which contains several lessons that might help you in your learning process.

In German, an adjective is a word whose main role is to modify a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition. Some examples are: That is a green tree. I met a very old man. In German adjectives come before the noun they describe (like in English).

German Adjectives (Genders/Number)

In German the use of adjective for the masculine is different than the feminine, also the use of singular is different than the plural, here are some examples in the table below:

The difficulty arises from the fact that when declining an adjective, three things must be taken into account: case, gender, and the type of declension ("strong", "mixed" or "weak").

Strong inflection is used:

• When no article is used
• After etwas (some; somewhat), mehr (more)
• After wenig- (few), viel- (much; many), mehrer- (several; many), all- (all), which also have strong adjective inflection.
• After personal pronouns other than mir, dir, ihm
• After number adjectives with no endings

The mixed inflection is used after the indefinite article ein-, kein-, and the possessive determiners.

Weak inflection is used:

• After the definite article
• After derselb- (the same), derjenig- (the one)
• After dies- (this), jen- (that), jeglich- (any), jed- (every), which decline like the definite article.
• After manch- (some), solch- (such), welch- (which), which decline like definite article.
• After mir, dir, ihm
• After arm (meagre), alt (old), all (all)

No Ending

Several adjectives take no ending at all:

• Singular limiting adjectives: wenig, etwas, genug, and viel
• The plural limiting phrase 'ein Paar'

Below is some vocabulary training for adjectives in German or Deutsch, try to memorize the adjectives below, because they’re very important.

More on German Adjectives

Adjectives in German (as well as in English) describe or modify nouns, but in German they should agree in gender and number with the noun they modify. Adjectives forms vary depending on the case (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive).

Note how adjectives take an extra “e” when they’re placed before nouns and a definite article is placed before them in the nominative:

For all the rest of the cases (accusative, dative and genitive) adjectives ending take “en” in the masculine, and “e” in the feminine and neuter.

Accusative: Ich habe den schnellen Tiger gesehen (I have seen the fast tiger), Ich habe die junge Dame gesehen. (I have seen the young lady).

The same thing happens with dative and genitive where the adjective take “en” in the masculine, and “e” in the feminine/ neuter/plural.

Remember that this happens only when we add a definite article der, die, das (the) or the pronouns dieser (this), jener (that), solcher (such), jeder (each), welcher (which).

The plural ending for these weak adjectives is “en” in ALL cases (nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive), which is good news.

Ich habe die schnellen Katzen gesehen (I have seen the fast cats).

Ich habe die jungen Damen gesehen (I have seen the young ladies).

Adjectives proceeded by the indefinite articles (ein/ eine/ ein) or the pronouns such as mein (my, mine), sein (his)… kein (no) have an irregular declension:

The plural endings for strong adjectives are the same for all three genders:

Below is a list of some common adjectives in German, they’re in their original form, so they’re not yet influenced by any other cases like (accusative, dative, and genitive), so take that into consideration when you put these adjectives in a non nominative case.

For example: Er ist schnell (he is fast). (but) Er ist ein schneller Mann.(note how in the first setences the adjective schnell wasn’t influenced by anything and therefore stayed in its original form, but in the second example “ein” made it take “er” at the end). The same thing may occur to the adjectives below:

I hope the content of this page was useful to you, and that you learned some German Adjectives (Deutsch). Make sure to memorize them to be able to use them in your daily conversation. Also, remember to check out our Learn German page, which contains several lessons that might help you in your learning process.