La concordancia — The Agreement Rule
🔤 La concordancia — The Agreement Rule
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Masculine | alto | altos |
| Feminine | alta | altas |
Examples: un chico alto · una chica alta · unos chicos altos · unas chicas altas
Adjectives ending in -e or a consonant have the same form for masculine and feminine — only the plural changes:
| Singular (masc + fem) | Plural (masc + fem) |
|---|---|
| inteligente | inteligentes |
| fácil | fáciles |
| difícil | difíciles |
| grande | grandes |
Two rules catch students out every year: where you put the adjective, and when a handful of adjectives change their form before a noun.
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❌ Errores frecuentes — Common Mistakes
❌ Error 1: Mi amiga es inteligento.
✅ Correcto: Mi amiga es inteligente.
Por qué importa: Inteligente ends in -e, which means it has no separate masculine or feminine form. The same spelling is used for both genders: un chico inteligente / una chica inteligente. Adding -o to make it sound "masculine" is incorrect — there is no form inteligento in Spanish. Only adjectives ending in -o (like alto) change to -a for the feminine.
❌ Error 2: Es una grande casa.
✅ Correcto: Es una casa grande.
Por qué importa: This sentence contains two errors at once. First, descriptive adjectives in Spanish follow the noun — so casa must come before grande. Second, placing grande directly before a noun would shorten it to gran and shift its meaning to "great" (una gran casa = a great house). To say "a big house," use the full form grande in its correct position — after the noun: una casa grande.
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Quiz · Question 1 of 13
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