There are also some rarer adjectives, which are not used attributively at all in my experience, but are suffixed with -farben or replaced by an entirely different adjective:ĭas Kleid ist khaki. Also I would not know what problem should arise from inflecting these adjectives. While some native speakers will actually do so for lila, rosa, extra, prima, super and klasse, I have never seen anybody do so for any other adjectives (e.g., orange, pink or türkis) and most people will consider it a mistake, if you use them attributively but not inflected. Now, for reasons that are beyond me (see this question, some language authorities¹ in the past decided, that some adjectives (especially colour adjectives) should not be inflected at all.
![german adjective endings german adjective endings](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ef/b6/57/efb65732aba8d7a2e3ee5c4bc84c1a09.jpg)
türkis or pink), there is no such or a similar problem.
![german adjective endings german adjective endings](http://helpmelearngerman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Strong-declension-of-the-German-adjectives.png)
However with most adjectives ending on consonants (e.g. The most common fix to this (and what most native speakers will actually do), is to insert an n for every inflected form, i.e.:Įin rosaner Kasten, eine rosane Blüte, ein rosanes Kleid, auf rosanem Untergrund, … – But: Das Haus ist rosa. Though these are pronounceable, the a-e collision does not appear in any other German word and therefore sounds weird to German ears and is avoided. For adjectives, however, we have only one inflection scheme available, which mandates forms ending on -e, -er, -es, -en, -em and so on.Īnd this cannot be simply applied to everything, e.g., if we tried to inflect rosa like any other adjective, we would get:Įin rosa’er Kasten, eine rosa’e Blüte, ein rosa’es Kleid, auf rosa’em Untergrund, … For verbs, we can usually just append an -en to form the infinitive and continue from there, e.g. For nouns, this is usually not a problem, since we have a plethora of nouns already and thus many different inflection schemes, one of which can be applied to the newly loaned word. When a language loans a word, it has to assimilate it into its own grammar, which means especially that inflected forms have to be provided, which can be instantly recognised as what they are supposed to be. There are also some adjectives who end on a vowel, but not on a pure vowel letter like froh, zäh or klar, whose ending turns into a consonant upon inflection ( froher, zäher, klarer). Of those, only 18 are ending on a pure vowel letter (e.g., müde, neu, schlau, frei) and all of those either end on a voiceless e (schwa) or a diphthong.
![german adjective endings german adjective endings](https://graducation.weebly.com/uploads/1/7/1/6/17166896/4701070.jpg)
Wikipedia states their number to be ca. 250 and gives a list that looks quite complete to me. The probable reason behind all this is that the German language does not have many primary adjectives, i.e., adjectives that are neither loaned nor derived from some other word (like hässlich, einig, porös, chaotisch, machbar, golden, verwandt, kafkaesk, Berliner, …).