Adjectives in Egyptian Arabic

• Introduction
• Some basic adjectives
• Inflections for gender and number
• Agreement
• Nisba adjectives

Introduction

An adjective is a word that describes a noun — "smart," "pretty," "good," etc. Remember that اسم الفاعل (the active participle) acts as an adjective.

Some basic adjectives

Here's a list of some common, basic adjectives in Egyptian Arabic:

Inflections for gender and number

As with nouns, to make adjectives feminine or plural, usually you add a suffix: ـة (-a) for the feminine form, ـين (-iin) for the regular plural form. But again, many adjectives do not have regular plural forms, so for those you have to memorize the broken plurals. The first half of the list above is made up of adjectives with broken plurals. Also see the following examples:

Here's a regular adjective:

Note: Say an adjective ends in ـي (-i) and is not of the form فاعل (faa3il). When you're adding on your ـة and ـين suffixes to make it feminine/plural, you need to insert a "yy" between the adjective and the suffix (in terms of your pronunciation).

* See below for more on this type of adjective.

If, however, an adjective ending in ـي is of the form فاعل, you don't insert a "yy" between it and the suffix when you're making it feminine/plural. And while the masculine form of this adjective has a long "aa," the feminine and plural forms have a short "a."

Adjectives: agreement

In English, adjectives come right before the noun they describe, but in Arabic, adjectives always directly follow the noun they modify. Also, adjectives and nouns must always agree in definiteness (they must be both definite or both indefinite).

Adjectives for singular nouns

A singular noun is modified by a singular adjective of the same gender.

Adjectives for dual nouns

Any dual noun must be modified by a plural adjective.

Adjectives for human plural nouns

Human plural nouns, masculine or feminine, are usually modified by masculine plural adjectives.

Adjectives for non-human plural nouns

Note: A lot of beginning students get confused about adjectival phrases and whether or not they can be complete sentences. Look at these examples for some clarification:

Nisba adjectives (النسبة)

Nisba adjectives are those that indicate a relationship, often a nationality. Nouns are transformed into these adjectives in this manner:

Here are some examples of nouns and their correponding nisba adjectives:

Note: For some nouns that end in -a, you don't follow that formula but use the suffixes ـوي (-awi), ـوية (-aweyya), and ـويين (-awiyyiin).

Some plural nisba adjectives are irregular: