There are 5 types of adjectives.

Their place in a sentence is before the word they describe.

You might not need to know them by their official grammar names but this will help you classify them easily and better understand their use in the English Language.

1.Adjectives of Quality – their role is to describe the nature of a noun or a pronoun. They give further information about the characteristics of a noun/pronoun. You can identify an adjective of quality by answering the question “what kind?”

My friend is an honest person. (what kind of person is my friend?)

He is kind, ambitious and smart.

He lives in a big city. (what kind of city does he live in?)

2. Adjectives of Quantity – their role is to show the approximate amount of the noun or pronoun. Adjectives of quantity do not refer to numbers, they only give us a relative idea about the amount of something.

I have had enough salad.

All people in New York speak English.

Many children love swimming.

3. Adjectives of Number – their role is to show the number of nouns. They can be Definite Numeral Adjectives (cardinal and ordinal numbers), Indefinite Numeral Adjectives (they don’t give us an exact numerical amount) and Distributive Numeral Adjectives (used to refer to an individual noun within the whole amount).

Here are some examples:

There are four elephants at the zoo. Take a photo of the second elephant. (definite numeral adjectives)

All the cakes were tasty. Some cakes had chocolate cream. There were no vanilla cakes. (indefinite numeral adjectives)

Each child had a lollipop. (distributive numeral adjectives)

4. Demonstrative Adjectives – their role is to indicate a particular noun or pronoun. There are only four demonstrative adjectives: this, that, these and those.

This cat and that dog are funny.

These flowers are colourful.

Those children get along nicely.

5. Interrogative Adjectives – as their name suggests, they are used to ask questions about nouns or in relation to nouns.

What book did he recommend?

Where did he buy the juice from?

Which cake would you prefer?

Whose coat is this?

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