Stuck on a test question

DeletedA2Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

Stuck on a test question

With respect to the question "Which of the following masculine adjectives are the same in the feminine form?" which provides six choices, does the lesson provide the necessary information to correctly identify which are the same in their feminine form? I have the sense I am not comprehending exactly what the lesson is trying to tell us.   

(I think I know what the lesson is trying to say now--Would the question above be true if it were stated thus: "Which of the following masculine adjectives remain masculine when used with feminine nouns?")

Asked 1 year ago
InmaKwiziq team member

Hola William

The lesson is saying that adjectives that end in -e and in -a keep the same form for masculine and feminine, so there is no other ending: both have an -e at the end, or an -a at the end.

In the questions we give as a base the form of the adjective in the masculine form, and then ask if they are the same or not in the feminine form, offering different endings, so you need to work out that, as it is a masculine adjective ending in -e, you need the same for the feminine. We are using common enough adjectives that at that level the users are familiar with: grande, elegante, inteligente, importante... etc 

The way you are formulating the question is another possible way to do it, but I think we are expressing the same with the way we are formulating it. 

Saludos cordiales

 

DeletedA2Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

Thanks for the reply. What was causing me confusion was the sentence "They have the same form for both singular masculine and feminine (what?)."  I think if "nouns" were added to the end of the sentence it would be more clear.

But maybe I still don't get the lesson because the test question "Which of the following masculine adjectives are the same in the feminine form?" means that the adjective can be either masculine or feminine. By "form" do you mean the sentence itself? Or the adjective? Sorry, I read things pretty literally.

InmaKwiziq team member

Hola William 

I added an extra line to try and make it clearer, but just to clarify here: 

We always use the masculine form as the base of the adjective or noun; that is our reference. So in the lesson we say that when we have an adjective that ends in -e or -a in the masculine form, for example: un hombre grande, un hombre inteligente, un hombre egoísta..., we make the feminine form of that adjective exactly the same, so: una mujer grande, una mujer inteligente, una mujer egoísta... 

This is a contrast to what we do with regular adjectives that end in -o for masculine and -a for femimine:  un hombre guapo/ una mujer guapa, un hombre rico/ una mujer rica...

In the case of -e ending adjectives this change doesn't happen - it remains invariable

Note that when we say "form" we are referring to the actual word and its ending, how the word is "formed", what it looks like.

I hope this helped understand it a bit more.

Saludos de nuevo.

Deleted asked:View original

Stuck on a test question

With respect to the question "Which of the following masculine adjectives are the same in the feminine form?" which provides six choices, does the lesson provide the necessary information to correctly identify which are the same in their feminine form? I have the sense I am not comprehending exactly what the lesson is trying to tell us.   

(I think I know what the lesson is trying to say now--Would the question above be true if it were stated thus: "Which of the following masculine adjectives remain masculine when used with feminine nouns?")

Sign in to submit your answer

Don't have an account yet? Join today

Ask a question

Find your Spanish level for FREE

Test your Spanish to the CEFR standard

Find your Spanish level
Let me take a look at that...