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Adjectives
Adjectives are words that attribute a quality to a person or thing. In Romániço, all adjectives end in -a:
| bona |
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good |
| mala |
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bad |
| feda |
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ugly |
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Any word that isn’t already an adjective can be made into one simply by changing its ending to -a. One might also add -isc- (“concerning”), -os- (“full of”), or other affix to the word’s root, depending on the meaning one wants to convey:
| auro |
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gold |
| Mi es aura deo! |
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I am a god (made) of gold! |
| Mi es aurisca deo! |
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I am a god of (concerning) gold! |
| Mi es aurosa deo! |
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I am a god full of gold! |
| Mi es aurea deo! |
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I am a golden god! |
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Conversely, any adjective can be turned into a noun simply by changing its ending to -o:
| bono |
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a good person or thing |
| malo |
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a bad person or thing |
| fedo |
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an ugly person or thing |
| auroso |
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someone or something full of gold |
| aureo |
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a gold-colored person or thing |
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Not that this is always necessary, as adjectives can often do duty for nouns as-is:
| la bona, la mala, et la feda |
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the good, the bad, and the ugly |
In these cases, to emphasize that an adjective is describing something in the plural, one uses los (“they”) instead of la:
| Evites los vírida. Los incore ne es matura. |
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Avoid the green ones. They’re not ripe yet. |
The Placement of Adjectives
In general, one places adjectives before the people or things they describe unless one wishes to underscore their difference from other nouns of the same type:
| Dationes lo ad la alumno-adjutanto extránea. |
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Give it to the weird intern (not the normal one). |
| Dationes lo ad la extránea alumno-adjutanto. |
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Give it to the weird intern (the only intern we have, who’s a weirdo). |
| Ecuila hómino haban sánguino regisca en sia vénulos. |
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That man has royal blood in his veins (most people don’t). |
| la regisca sánguino di Ricardo II |
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the royal blood of Richard II (what other kind would he have?) |
| nerfisto egoista, imbécila et desneta |
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a stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder (assumes not all nerf-herders are like this) |
| egoista, imbécila, et desneta nerfisto |
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a stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder (the adjectives here are unsurprising epithets characteristic of all nerf-herders) |
| Via amico es imbécilo. |
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Your friend is an imbecile (no special emphasis on whose friend) |
| Ecuila amico via es imbécilo. |
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That friend of yours is an imbecile. |
| Ecuista parva porcucio |
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This little piggy |
| parva porcucio ecuista |
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This little piggy |
| Ec la tri extránea alumno-adjutantos, la extránea alumno-adjutanto vilosa pavorifan mi máxime. |
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Of the three weird interns, the hairy weird intern scares me the most. |
For simplicity’s sake, one can almost always put the adjectives first; only the stylistically bold need think about altering that order. However, adjectives that have a complement must come after the person or thing being described in order to make sense:
| Mi vidin celo nigra pro fumo. |
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I saw a sky black from smoke. |
| Mi es ángelo exterminanta je pudelos. |
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I am an angel exterminating poodles. |
Note that adjectives that do something to nouns other than the ones they modify (i.e., those that have a “direct object”) use je to distinguish, in this case, the exterminators from the exterminated.
| Mi es ángelo exterminanta N-ro 7. |
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I am (called) exterminating angel No. 7. |
| Mi es ángelo exterminanta je N-ro 7. |
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I am an angel exterminating No. 7. |
| Mi es exterminanta ángelo. |
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I am an exterminating angel. |
| Mi es exterminanta je ángelo. |
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I am exterminating an angel. |
Degrees of Comparison
“All animals are equal,” declares the ever-amended constitution in Animal Farm, “but some animals are more equal than others”. Such comparisons (equal and unequal) are expressed in Romániço in much the same way as they are in English:
| Vi es men ecuala cam mi. |
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You are less equal than I. |
| Vi es (tote) tam ecuala cam mi. |
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You are (just) as equal as I. |
| Vi es (etiam) plu ecuala cam mi. |
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You are (even) more equal than I. |
| Vi es la plu ecuala de/ec la du. |
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You are the more equal of/out of the two. |
| Vi deventionan sempre plu ecuala omnadie. |
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You’re becoming more and more equal every day. |
| Vi es la maxim ecuala de/ec omni. |
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You are the most equal of/out of all. |
| Vi es la minim ecuala de/ec omni. |
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You are the least equal of all. |
| Cuancam amba vi es ecuala, mi preferan vi (plu multe) cam via amico. |
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Though you are both equal, I prefer you to (more than) your friend. |
As might be expected from a planned language, there are no irregular or synthetic comparatives, as there are in English other languages:
| bona, plu bona, maxim bona |
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good, better, best |
| stúpida, plu stúpida, maxim stúpida |
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dumb, dumber, dumbest |
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