Adjective agreement

Why this is harder than it looks

Punjabi adjectives agree with gender too, so the concept is familiar — but the specific endings do not transfer, and English adjectives never change at all, which makes it easy to forget the feminine form exists. French adds a wrinkle on top: 6 of the 39 adjectives here never change, because they come from noun names rather than being true adjectives — orange, marron and rose stay exactly the same whether they describe un pull or une jupe. There is no shortcut for telling the two groups apart; the table below marks every one.

Getting it wrong is not a small blemish either, because in expression écrite a missed agreement is one visible error per adjective in the sentence — and unlike a missing article, a grader catches it on sight.

The patterns in this drill

• Regular: grand → grande, add -e
• Already -e: mince → mince, no change
• Nationalities: indien → indienne, double the n
• Doubled consonants: bon → bonne, gentil → gentille
• -eux → -euse: curieux → curieuse
• -if → -ive: actif → active
• Fully irregular: beau → belle, vieux → vieille
• Invariable colours: orange → orange, no change at all

Every pattern here is explained in full, with more examples and the exceptional cases (two adjectives on one noun, des → de before a plural adjective, gender traps like les cheveux), in the full lesson.

The full list

All 39 adjectives the drill uses, with the masculine and feminine forms, both plurals, and English and Punjabi glosses.

Word list last updated 2026-07-29.

Keep going

• Adjective agreement (full lesson)A1
• Practise noun genderGame
• Practise coloursGame
• Articles: le, la, les, un, une, desA1