Today we are going to talk about adjectives, all those words we use to describe an object or a person. In English it’s relatively a simple matter: the adjective (quality) always goes before the noun (object or person). For instance, the brown table will never be the table brown, or the old man won’t become the man old. Easy peasy. 

But in Italian? How does it work? We are always taught that the adjective goes after the noun, so why did my friend tell me I had a “buona idea” – a good idea – instead of a “idea buona?” It was already hard to conceptualize that Italians put the adjective after the object and not before, but now you’re telling me they don’t? Well, yes and no. Generally, what your teacher told you is true, but there are some cases in which you would use the adjective before an object or person. Let’s take a look at them. 

First of all, the rules are not too strict about this in Italian. Italian is a pretty flexible language, in which the speaker has some sort of freedom in placing the different words where they want in the sentence, always following a certain logic though. The verb can be placed after the subject, the time can be placed…well kind of wherever in the sentence and so on. So, you can create sentences like “ieri è andato Marco al mercato” or “Marco è andato ieri al mercato” or again “Al mercato è andato Marco ieri.” Of course the meaning changes slightly, but they are all possible options. Which means that the same is true with adjectives, the speaker has a certain freedom to put it either before or after the noun, depending on what the speaker wants to highlight or imply. 

As a general rule though, the adjective should go after the noun. As we said before for example, “gli occhiali nuovi” and so on. The adjective after the noun is considered the distinctive characteristic of the noun, meaning that that’s the main characteristic of that object. If we put the adjective before the noun like “una giovane donna,” the emphasis is on the noun “donna” – woman – not on “giovane” – young – and that’s called the descriptive characteristic of the noun. I know I know, what’s really the difference? 

The reality is that the different use is very subjective. What do you want to highlight? The woman or the woman’s age? Is what you are saying subjective or pretty objective? For instance, the blue sky is mostly going to be cielo azzurro and not azzurro cielo, unless you want to be poetic. That’s another variable in the equation: if you place the adjective before the noun you give some poetry to what you are saying. I know this doesn’t help at all, but that’s how it works. 

There are certain cases where the adjective MUST go afterwards. That’s the case of materials, shapes, colors and nationalities.  When clarifying the shapes, materials, and color of an object, the adjective has to go after the noun: una cornice ovale, una scogliera rocciosa, una macchina bianca – an oval frame, a rocky cliff, a white car. The same occurs when we want to specify the origin of a person: una ragazza americana – an American girl. By the way, notice that nationalities in Italian are not capitalized! 

And there are some adjectives like alto – tall – vecchio, – old – bello – beautiful/nice, – buono – good/tasty, – diverse – different, –  grande – big, – which completely change the meaning of what you want to say depending on where you put them. For example, “old friend” can be both un amico vecchio which means a friend that is old in age, and un vecchio amico which means a person you have been friends with for a very long time. “Different colors” can be expressed as colori diversi, which implies that they are different colors like red, blue, yellow, while diversi colori is intended as “various colors.” And again, “good man” can be translated into un uomo buono or buon uomo, the first meaning kind, generous, and the second meaning simple, down-to-earth. 

You are probably just reading this article and getting even more confused, if that is possible. Trust me, the majority of native speakers don’t use the rules I just explained to you, they just know “buona idea” sounds much better than “idea buona” for no reason, they just follow their instinct. And that’s exactly my advice for you. Your best bet is to just follow your ear as you would say in Italian: follow what sounds good to you and your instinct.