Hindi adjectives divide into two groups and only one of them causes any difficulty at all. Those ending in aa change to match the noun they describe, while everything else stays frozen regardless of what follows. This page sorts the fifty most useful adjectives into those two groups so you can stop checking each one individually.
Group One — These Change
All of these end in आ and therefore inflect: अच्छा, अच्छी, अच्छे. Feminine takes ई, plural masculine takes ए, and the oblique also takes ए — बड़े घर में. Others in this group include गरम, महँगा, गंदा, सीधा, ऊँचा and पतला.
Group Two — These Never Change
These end in a consonant or in ई, and they are invariant: सुंदर लड़का and सुंदर लड़की are both correct with no change. Most Sanskrit and Persian borrowings fall here, including लाल, तेज़, गरीब, अमीर, ज़रूरी and बीमार.
The trap is सफ़ेद, which looks as though it should inflect but does not, and भारी, which ends in ई and stays frozen. When in doubt, check the final vowel: only आ triggers agreement.
There is a small third category worth flagging: adjectives borrowed from English, which behave as invariant regardless of their ending. फ्री, स्मार्ट, चीप and सेफ all stay frozen even when they end in a vowel sound, because Hindi treats loanwords as indeclinable unless they have been thoroughly nativised. This means a sentence like यह जगह सेफ है needs no agreement at all, which makes code-mixed speech grammatically simpler than pure Hindi in this one respect.
Opposites Worth Learning Together
Learning adjectives in pairs is more efficient than in lists, because the opposite gives you a hook for recall. Notice that pairs frequently split across the two groups — गरम is invariant while ठंडा inflects, so you cannot assume a pair behaves consistently.
Comparison
Hindi has no comparative form and no word for than. It uses से, meaning from, so the structure reads literally as this from that big is. Superlatives use सबसे, from all. The adjective itself never changes form for comparison, which makes this one of the simplest areas of Hindi grammar.
Word order is worth noting too. Adjectives come before the noun, exactly as in English, and multiple adjectives stack in front without any fixed sequence — बड़ा पुराना घर and पुराना बड़ा घर are both acceptable. Hindi has nothing resembling the rigid adjective order that English imposes, which removes a difficulty most learners never even notice they have avoided.
Pronunciation Tips
The three endings must be audibly distinct — अच्छा, अच्छी and अच्छे carry the whole agreement and blurring them loses it. अच्छा doubles the aspirated chh. ठंडा opens with an aspirated retroflex ṭh plus a nasal. ख़राब and साफ़ both carry nukta sounds, the raspy kh and the f. And महँगा has a nasal in the middle rather than a hard n.
Common Mistakes
- Inflecting invariant adjectives, as in सुंदरी लड़की.
- Failing to inflect आ-ending adjectives with feminine nouns.
- Forgetting that adjectives also go oblique — बड़े घर में, not बड़ा घर में.
- Assuming सफ़ेद inflects because it looks like it should.
- Trying to translate than literally rather than using से.
Practice Exercises
- Sort twenty adjectives you know into the two groups.
- Use अच्छा with a masculine, feminine and plural noun.
- Build five comparisons with से and three superlatives with सबसे.
- Put three adjective-noun pairs into the oblique.
- Learn eight opposite pairs and note which group each belongs to.