Adjectives: the basics

In Albanian, adjectives agree with the noun they describe — in gender and number always, and (for one of the two classes) in case and definiteness too. Every adjective belongs to one of two classes, and which one changes how it behaves completely.

Class 1 — mostly nationalities and a handful of other words. No linking article, and the form never changes for case: the same four shapes cover every sentence.

Class 2 — the larger group. These always appear together with a linking article (i / e / të / së) placed immediately before them. The article is not part of the adjective itself — it agrees with the noun's gender, case, definiteness and number, and with whether the adjective sits right next to the noun. See "The linking article" for the full system.

Most Class 2 adjectives follow this pattern exactly: one base word covers the masculine singular, feminine singular and masculine plural, and only the feminine plural adds -a.

A smaller group ends in -ëm in the masculine and shifts to -me in the feminine — e.g. i këndshëm / e këndshme "pleasant". The plural simply repeats the singular form for each gender; only the linking article marks singular from plural.

A handful of common Class 2 adjectives are genuinely irregular and have to be memorized as-is: i keq / e keqe / e këqij / e këqija "bad" is one of them — all four forms are distinct, not derived from any pattern.

Because the dictionary form of a Class 2 adjective is usually cited together with its article (i mirë, e mirë), this reference stores the bare stem but matches a search for either the stem or the citation form — searching "mirë" or "i mirë" finds the same entry.

Definiteness — whether a noun takes the enclitic definite article or not — feeds directly into which linking article a Class 2 adjective takes; see "Definiteness" in the Nouns section for how that works on the noun's own side.