ADJECTIVES FOR MIXED GENDER GROUPS
What adjective should you use to describe a group of people? The adjective should be plural, and if it is a group of female people, you would use a feminine adjective; if it is a group of male people, you would use a masculine adjective – but what if the group includes both females and males? In the Latin language, the masculine gender is used to describe any group that includes at least one male. Even if you had one million women and only one little baby boy, the adjective to describe the group would be masculine. As for the case, that depends on how the noun is used in the sentence!
e.g., validae sorōrēs, validī frātrēs, validī Rōmānī
IRREGULAR ADJECTIVES
Besides the two basic types of adjectives (1st/2nd Declension Adjectives & 3rd Declension Adjectives) there are also some subsets of adjectives and some exceptions to these groups (e.g., alius, alia, aliud).
One subset is a type of 1st/2nd Declension Adjective that ends in “-er” in the masculine nominative singular forms. You may see a few of these types with ruber, āter, and miser in this unit. Another common example is pulcher, meaning handsome or beautiful. With these adjectives, pay close attention to how the other genders are listed – sometimes the “e” in the “er” is dropped for all the other forms, sometimes it is not! Compare the following adjectives. Which drops the “e”?
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER
ruber, rubra, rubrum
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER
miser, misera, miserum