Arabic Adjective Agreement: Gender, Number, Definiteness and Case

01Start with the noun’s gender

Kitab is masculine; haqiba is feminine. The adjective follows each noun: jadidun for the book, jadidatun for the bag. The ending ة is pronounced t in these full forms. Both examples describe one thing.

02Match definite with definite

Now both words have ال. The adjective belongs inside a definite noun phrase, so it is definite too. In “a new book,” neither word has ال and both regular words take tanween. In “the new book,” neither takes tanween.

These are phrases identifying something. They do not yet tell us what happened to it or make a statement such as “The book is new.” Practise the pair as one unit.

03Carry the case through the phrase

Fi makes the noun it governs genitive. The adjective describing that noun is genitive too. For these regular singular words, both endings are i. We have kept the case vowels in the reading so you can hear the agreement.

An adjective does not automatically end in u. Its case follows the noun it describes. The same feminine, singular and definite bag phrase now has genitive endings because of its place in the larger structure.

04Check number, with one useful exception

The dual uses dual agreement. Human plurals also normally take plural adjectives: مُدَرِّسُونَ مُجْتَهِدُونَ (mudarrisuna mujtahiduna), “hardworking male teachers.” You do not need to learn every plural ending today.

For ordinary nonhuman plurals such as books, Standard Arabic normally uses a feminine singular adjective. Kutub means several books, but jadidatun has the same form used for one feminine noun. This is a regular agreement pattern, not a claim that there is only one book.

05Ask four small questions

Before choosing the adjective, identify the noun it describes. Then ask: masculine or feminine? One, two or more? Definite or indefinite? Nominative, accusative or genitive? Apply the nonhuman plural pattern when needed.

For “in the new bag,” the answers are feminine, singular, definite and genitive. That gives aljadidati in its full standalone form, read ljadidati after the preceding vowel. The adjective agrees in grammatical features; it does not simply copy the noun’s letters.

Our examples show full formal endings. When stopping, final short endings are usually not pronounced, but the written grammatical relationship remains. Keep these checks for phrases; a predicate giving information about a subject has a different job.