This deep dive covers Posición y apocopación — Position and Shortening within Adjective agreement + position for GCSE Spanish. Revise Adjective agreement + position in Core Grammar for GCSE Spanish with 13 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. Use this page as part of a wider topic revision path rather than treating it as an isolated fact. It is section 2 of 4 in this topic. Use this deep dive to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
🔍 Posición y apocopación — Position and Shortening
Two rules catch students out every year: where you put the adjective, and when a handful of adjectives change their form before a noun.
Adjective position — after the noun
In English, adjectives come before the noun. In Spanish, descriptive adjectives almost always come after the noun. This is the default rule — learn it as the pattern, not the exception.
| English order | Spanish order |
|---|---|
| a big house | una casa grande |
| an intelligent student | un estudiante inteligente |
| a blue car | un coche azul |
| a hard test | un examen difícil |
Apocopation — four adjectives that shorten before a noun
A small group of adjectives drop their final syllable when placed directly before a masculine singular noun. This is called apocopación. These four are the ones you need for AQA:
| Full form | Short form | When? | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| bueno | buen | before masculine singular noun | un buen amigo (but: una buena amiga) |
| malo | mal | before masculine singular noun | un mal día (but: una mala idea) |
| grande | gran | before any singular noun = "great" | un gran hombre / una gran mujer |
| primero | primer | before masculine singular noun | el primer día |
Note on grande: When grande comes before a noun (as gran), it means "great". When it comes after a noun, it means "big/large": una gran mujer = a great woman · una mujer grande = a big woman.