Dutch Adjectives

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In Dutch all adjectives precede their nouns: de goede man (the good man)

The adjectives can be divided into two categories:

• material adjectives: ijzeren (of iron), gouden (of gold)

• normal adjectives

Contents 1 Material adjectives 2 Normal adjectives 3 Past Particples as adjectives 4 Qualified adjectives

Material adjectives

The material adjectives never change form when they are used in front of a noun:

het gouden huis (the gold house), een ijzeren brug (an iron bridge)

de gouden huizen (the gold houses), de ijzeren bruggen (the iron bridges)

but when they are used predicatively (i.e. after 'zijn' = to be), they are preceded by the proposition 'van' (= of) and they lose -en:

het huis is van goud (the house is made of gold), de bruggen zijn van ijzer (the bridges are made of iron)

Normal adjectives

These have always two forms:

• the basic form that can be found in the dictionary: goed (good), geel (yellow), blij (happy)

• the extended form that is made by adding -e (mute e) to the basic form: goede (good), gele (yellow), blije (happy)

Note: when the basic form ends in a double vowel followed by a single consonant, the vowel becomes single in the extended form:

rood - rode (red) but groen - groene (green)

The basic form is only used in two cases:

• when the adjective is used predicatively:

de zon is geel (the sun is yellow), het kind is blij (the child is happy), een boek is goed (a book is good), de huizen zijn groot (the houses are big)

• when the adjective is between the indefinite article 'een' and a neuter noun:

paard (horse) is neuter because its definite article is 'het': het paard, so we find: een wit paard (a white horse)

the same goes for huis (house): het huis becomes een groot huis (a big house)

In all other cases we use the extended form:

een grote man, het witte paard, de gele zon, witte paarden, grote huizen, goede kinderen.

Past Particples as adjectives

A Past Partciple can be used as an adjective but it follows some rules of its own.

• The past participles of strong verbs that end on -en are never changed. They don't have an extended form:

een gesneden brood, het gesneden brood, gesneden broden (a cut bread, the cut bread, cut breads)

• All other past participles end on -d or -t. The basic forms are equal to the participle itself, the extended form gets an extra mute e:

een geschilderd huis (a painted house), de geschilderde muur (the painted wall)

Qualified adjectives

When an adjective is used as a separate entity with one of the following qualifiers it gets an -s as ending:

iets (something), niets (nothing), veel (much), weinig (few), meer (more), minder (less), genoeg (sufficient)

e.g. ik zie iets goeds (I see something good)