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So can those ending in -ch / -tch (e.g. "the French", "the Dutch") provided they are pronounced with a 'ch' sound (e.g. the adjective Czech does not qualify). Many place-name adjectives and many demonyms are also used for various other things, sometimes with and sometimes without one or more additional words.
Adjectives ending -ish can be used as collective demonyms (e.g. the English, the Cornish). So can those ending in -ch / -tch (e.g. the French, the Dutch) provided they are pronounced with a 'ch' sound (e.g., the adjective Czech does not qualify). Where an adjective is a link, the link is to the language or dialect of the same name.
Adjectives ending -ish can be used as collective demonyms (e.g. the English, the Cornish). So can those ending in -ch / -tch (e.g. the French, the Dutch) provided they are pronounced with a 'ch' sound (e.g. the adjective Czech does not qualify). Where an adjective is a link, the link is to the language or dialect of the same name.
Adjectives already ending in -s or -sch don't take this ending: Ik heb iets paars aangetrokken. ("I've put on something purple.") (the base form is already paars) Er is niet veel fantastisch aan. ("There isn't much fantastic about it.") The few adjectives that end in a long vowel take instead -'s with an apostrophe like certain noun plurals.
Adjectives ending in -e all lose the -e before inflectional endings: blīðe ("happy"), nom. sg. masc. blīðne. They also all retain -u: blīðu ċildru ("happy children"). [14] If an adjective ends in short æ plus a single consonant, the æ becomes a before endings beginning with a vowel: glæd ("glad"), nom. pl. masc. glade.
The ending carries grammatical information, including case, number, and gender. [1] Gender is an inherent property of a noun but is part of the inflection of an adjective, because it must agree with the gender of the noun it modifies. [2] Thus, the general morphological form of such words is R+S+E:
Such adjective phrases can be integrated into the clause (e.g., Love dies young) or detached from the clause as a supplement (e.g., Happy to see her, I wept). Adjective phrases functioning as predicative adjuncts are typically interpreted with the subject of the main clause being the predicand of the adjunct (i.e., "I was happy to see her"). [11]
An adjective never has to agree with the noun it modifies, but adjectives may be pluralized when there is no explicit noun to modify. le parve infantes 'the little children'; but le parves 'the little ones' Comparative degree is expressed by plus or minus preceding the adjective and superlative degree by le plus or le minus.