Spot the mistake
French description errors: long hair but a short jacket
Correct eight French descriptions with two different nouns. Keep long hair separate from a short jacket and change only the adjective that disagrees.
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In short
An adjective agrees with the noun it describes, not every noun in the sentence. In les cheveux longs et une veste courte, longs follows masculine plural cheveux, while courte follows feminine singular veste. Repair the one mismatched adjective in each line below.
Yellow the idea to rememberBlue French to learn
Each sentence contains two different described things. Some adjectives are already correct and must stay as they are. Locate the noun connected to the questionable adjective before changing its ending. One person can have long hair and wear a short jacket without any contradiction.
Tap the word that's wrong in each sentence.
She has long hair and a short jacket.
Cheveux is masculine plural, so use longs. Courte already agrees with feminine veste.
He is wearing a green jumper and a white shirt.
Pull is masculine singular, so vert is needed. Blanche already agrees with chemise.
She is wearing a grey coat and black shoes.
Chaussures is feminine plural, so noir becomes noires. Gris already fits manteau.
He has a short beard and black hair.
Cheveux is masculine plural, so use noirs. Courte already agrees with barbe.
She is wearing a small blue jacket and long black trousers.
Veste is feminine singular, so use bleue. Long and noir correctly describe pantalon.
He is wearing a long coat and small grey shoes.
Chaussures is feminine plural, so gris becomes grises. Long correctly describes manteau.
She has short hair and a green scarf.
Écharpe is feminine singular, so use verte. Courts already agrees with cheveux.
He is wearing a large red hat and round glasses.
Lunettes is feminine plural, so rond becomes rondes. Grand and rouge correctly describe chapeau.
Make two small noun groups before correcting
| First group | Second group |
|---|---|
| Les cheveux longs | Une veste courte |
| Un pull vert | Une chemise blanche |
| Un manteau gris | Des chaussures noires |
| Une barbe courte | Les cheveux noirs |
Les cheveux longs is one group. Une veste courte is another. Moving the feminine ending from veste to cheveux would produce the wrong longues. The person’s own gender is not the controlling fact: cheveux stays masculine plural whoever has the hair.
Position and agreement are separate decisions
A small set of adjectives commonly appears before the noun in these examples: petite veste, long pantalon, grand chapeau. Colours remain after their nouns. Whether an adjective is before or after does not remove agreement: petite still fits veste, and noir still fits pantalon.
Elle porte une petite veste bleue et un long pantalon noir.
She is wearing a small blue jacket and long black trousers.
Gris and grises show why the noun matters
Un manteau gris has masculine singular gris. De petites chaussures grises has feminine plural grises. A masculine plural would also use gris, as in des gants gris. The same colour meaning can therefore have different endings in the two noun groups, or an unchanged masculine spelling.
Before changing an adjective, point to the noun it belongs to. A correction should repair that one relationship while preserving the other noun group. This keeps a correct phrase from being changed merely because another part of the sentence is wrong.