Wednesday 26 October 2011

Bravo, caro, bello!

Studying Italian one becomes aware of the fact that, other than in English, adjectives tend to follow nouns instead of preceding them. So, a red rose becomes una rosa rossa (i.e. 'a rose red') in Italian. Even if this is the general rule, there are exceptions and these include for example the adjectives bravo (good), caro (dear), and bello (nice, pretty, beautiful). For some reason adjectives denoting positive qualities are more often found in this position than negative ones.
So you tend to say things like:

(1) Matteo è un
bravo ragazzo

(2) Le tue sorelle sono
care amiche

(3) 'Gone with the wind' è un
bel film

Notice two things: first of all, even if the adjectives precede the nouns they still need to agree with them in gender and number. Secondly the noun-adjective order is not completely impossible, only it would sound slightly odd to the ear of a native Italian speaker.
The noun-adjective order becomes again the only possibility as soon as the adjective is modified through words like molto, abbastanza, davvero etc.,..

(4) Matteo è un
ragazzo molto bravo

(5) Le tue sorelle sono
amiche davvero care

(6) 'Gone with the wind' è un
film abbastanza bello

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