Décrire une personne : gender & adjective agreement

You’ll be able to

Interpret descriptions of personality and identity in French texts
Apply rules of gender and adjective agreement, including irregular forms
Recognize high-frequency vocabulary for personality and appearance

Adjective agreement: the four forms

French adjectives agree with the noun in gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural). The regular pattern adds nothing for masculine singular, -e for feminine, -s for plural, -es for feminine plural: un ami content, une amie contente, des amis contents, des amies contentes (a happy friend…). An adjective already ending in -e does not change for gender: un homme calme / une femme calme. Placement matters: most adjectives follow the noun (une personne généreuse), but short common ones (beau, bon, grand, petit, jeune, nouveau) come before it (un bon ami).

Irregular agreement patterns

Several endings shift in the feminine. -eux → -euse (heureux / heureuse, happy), -if → -ive (sportif / sportive, athletic), -eur → -euse (travailleur / travailleuse, hardworking), and some double the consonant: -el → -elle (intellectuel / intellectuelle). A few adjectives are irregular outright: beau/belle, nouveau/nouvelle, vieux/vieille, blanc/blanche, long/longue. When you read, an ending like -euse or -ive signals a feminine referent — a clue to who is being described.

Vocabulary of personality and identity

High-frequency descriptors include gentil(le) (kind), honnête (honest), fier/fière (proud), timide (shy), ambitieux/ambitieuse (ambitious), ouvert(e) d’esprit (open-minded), and franc/franche (frank). For identity itself: l’identité (identity), les origines (roots/background), la fierté (pride), appartenir à (to belong to), and se sentir (to feel — reflexive). In Francophone contexts, identity is often tied to la langue (language) and le patrimoine (heritage), especially in bilingual or multicultural societies like Québec, Belgium, and North Africa.

Worked example

Interpret: « Amina est une jeune femme algérienne fière de ses origines. Elle est ambitieuse et ouverte d’esprit, mais parfois timide. » — Identify the person described and justify each adjective form.

1.Gloss: "Amina is a young Algerian woman proud of her roots. She is ambitious and open-minded, but sometimes shy."
2.Confirm the referent is feminine: femme, and the name Amina.
3.Check agreement: algérienne (fem. of algérien, doubling n + e), fière (fem. of fier), ambitieuse (-euse from ambitieux), ouverte (fem. of ouvert) — all feminine to match.
4.Note timide ends in -e already, so it looks identical for both genders.
5.Interpret: the phrase fière de ses origines signals identity rooted in heritage — a common Francophone theme of pride in one’s cultural background.

Answer: Every adjective is in the feminine form to agree with the feminine subject Amina/femme: algérienne, fière, ambitieuse, ouverte, while timide is invariable. The text portrays a young woman whose identity is grounded in pride for her Algerian heritage.

Checkpoint

Which sentence shows correct adjective agreement?

Tip

A feminine ending is often a reading clue. Seeing -euse, -ive, -elle, -ère, or -enne on an adjective tells you the noun it describes is feminine — helpful when the subject is a pronoun or appears earlier in the sentence.

Checkpoint

The feminine singular form of the adjective « heureux » (happy) is:

On the exam

In fill-in-the-blank grammar items, first find the noun the adjective describes, decide its gender and number, then apply the ending. Reading the whole sentence for the referent prevents the most common agreement errors.

Answer the 2 checkpoints as you read.