Three steps. You are running steps 1 and 2. This page is about step 3.
Why this page exists, and it is not the reason you would guess. In a ten-item test tonight you chose the right ending on every single item that needed one. Not one invented ending, and all three items whose answer was "leave it alone" came back untouched. The agreement grid is working.
Three of your four misses were one operation: the ending went on and the word in front of it was left exactly as printed. proste, frumosi, verdi — right ending, unrewritten stem. That is step 3, and you already own it: it is the same step 3 that carries your noun plurals, which now hold at 90%. Nobody had told you the adjective runs the same machine.
The adjective has no opinion of its own. It copies what the noun already is.
Neuter is not a third answer: a neuter noun counts as masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural. That is why the grid has four cells and not six.
This is one stored fact per adjective — 4, 3, 2 or 1 — learned with the word, the way gender is learned with a noun.
A 2-form adjective has no separate feminine singular. A 1-form adjective has no endings anywhere. In those slots the correct action is to write nothing.
You do not attach the ending to the word as printed. The ending reaches back into the word and changes a letter first.
Skipping it does not look like an error while you write — the ending is right, the word is right, and the result is wrong. That is exactly what tonight's three misses were.
The two endings pull in different directions, and that is the whole table:
-ă and -e open the vowel. · -i softens the final consonant.
All three of tonight's misses are covered by that one line. Nothing else was wrong with them.
| Ending | What moves | You wrote | Romanian writes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -e | vowel: o → oa | proste | proaste | două cărți proaste
two bad books |
| -i | consonant: s → ș | frumosi | frumoși | cinci munți frumoși
five beautiful mountains |
| -i | consonant: d → z | verdi | verzi | trei pereți verzi
three green walls |
| Change | In an adjective | In a noun you already own | |
|---|---|---|---|
| d → z | verzi | oglinzi · străzi | verzi, oglinzi, străzi
green, mirrors, streets |
| s → ș | frumoși · proști | none in your list yet | frumoși, proști
beautiful, stupid |
| t → ț | no adjective yet | frați · munți · studenți | frați, munți, studenți
brothers, mountains, students |
| c stays c | mici | bunici | mici, bunici
small, grandparents |
Watch the one that does not move. Before -i the vowel stays put: proști keeps its o, and frumoși keeps its o. The vowel only opens before -ă and -e — proastă, proaste, frumoasă, frumoase. One adjective, two different step 3s, chosen by the ending.
And inside a cluster, only one letter moves. prost ends in st, but the plural is proști — the s softens and the t stays exactly where it is.
Your nouns already do this, and you get them right. oglindă → oglinzi is the same d → z as verde → verzi. frate → frați is the same softening before -i. You ran step 3 correctly on the noun side of a phrase tonight and skipped it on the adjective side of the same phrase.
The concept is not foreign either: Ukrainian rewrites a stem consonant before certain endings too — рука → руці, нога → нозі. What is new in Romanian is which endings trigger it, not that they do.
| Adjective | m sg and n sg | f sg | m pl | f pl and n pl | Forms | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bun | bun | bună | buni | bune | 4 | bun, bună, buni, bune
good |
| frumos | frumos | frumoasă | frumoși | frumoase | 4 | frumos, frumoasă, frumoși, frumoase
beautiful |
| prost | prost | proastă | proști | proaste | 4 | prost, proastă, proști, proaste
stupid |
| mic | mic | mică | mici | mici | 3 plurals merge | mic, mică, mici, mici
small |
| mare | mare | mare | mari | mari | 2 number only | mare, mare, mari, mari
big |
| verde | verde | verde | verzi | verzi | 2 number only | verde, verde, verzi, verzi
green |
| maro | maro | maro | maro | maro | 1 never moves | maro, maro, maro, maro
brown |
This is tonight's fourth miss, and it is a different fault from the other three. You were told this afternoon that mare ignores gender — true, and there is no such word as mară. It is easy to store that as "mare never changes".
It changes. Just not for gender.
| Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| gender moves it | no — one form covers m, f and n | ||
| number moves it | o casă mare | două case mari | o casă mare. două case mari.
a big house. two big houses. |
Same for verde: one form for the whole singular, one for the whole plural. Two forms, split by number. Only maro is genuinely frozen.
o fereastră + mic
1. f sg — fereastră is feminine, singular.
2. mic has 3 forms. The feminine singular ending is -ă.
3. -ă opens the vowel — but there is no o here to open. Nothing moves.
o fereastră mică
doi bunici + frumos
1. m pl — bunici is masculine, plural.
2. frumos has 4 forms. The masculine plural ending is -i.
3. -i softens the final consonant: s → ș. The o stays.
doi bunici frumoși
două birouri + verde
1. n pl — birou is neuter, so in the plural it counts as feminine.
2. verde has 2 forms. Both plurals are the same ending, -i.
3. -i softens: d → z.
două birouri verzi
un scaun + maro
1. n sg — scaun is neuter, so in the singular it counts as masculine.
2. maro has 1 form. There is no ending to choose.
3. No ending means nothing to trigger a rewrite. Step 3 does not run.
un scaun maro
These nouns appear nowhere else on this page. Say the answer out loud before you press.
o pernă + verde
o pernă verde
Feminine singular. verde has 2 forms and the whole singular is one of them, so there is no ending to add and step 3 never starts.
două oglinzi + mic
două oglinzi mici
Feminine plural. mic merges both plurals into one form. The noun in the same phrase ran the identical step 3 — oglindă to oglinzi.
un pahar + prost
un pahar prost
Neuter singular, which counts as masculine — and the masculine singular is the bare word. Nothing is added, so nothing is rewritten.
trei bunici + bun
trei bunici buni
Masculine plural, ending -i. The final letter is n, which is not in the softening set, so step 3 finds nothing to change.
două canapele + mare
două canapele mari
This is tonight's miss, in a new phrase. Gender does not move mare. Number does.
o bucătărie + frumos
o bucătărie frumoasă
Feminine singular, ending -ă — and -ă opens the vowel, so the o becomes oa before the ending goes on.