Picture a big red ball. Now, try to describe it. You probably used the words “big” and “red”, right? In English, these words are adjectives—a core part of our descriptive toolkit. We learn about them in elementary school as one of the fundamental “parts of speech”, right alongside nouns and verbs. It feels essential, elemental. How could you possibly describe the world without them?
But what if I told you that entire languages get by just fine without a distinct, separate category for adjectives? It’s a concept that might break your brain a little, but it reveals a profound truth about linguistic diversity. The tidy boxes we use to categorize words aren’t universal laws; they’re just one way of organizing reality. So, how do you describe a “big red ball” in a language with no dedicated words for “big” or “red”? The answer lies in the incredible flexibility of grammar.
Rethinking the “Parts of Speech”
First, let’s clarify what we mean by an “adjective”. In English and many other European languages, adjectives are a distinct word class with specific grammatical behaviors:
- They can appear before a noun (the attributive position): “a red ball”.
- They can appear after a linking verb like “to be” (the predicative position): “the ball is red“.
- They can be modified by adverbs like “very”: “a very red ball”.
We see these patterns and assume they are fundamental. However, linguistic typology—the study of how languages are structured—shows us that this is a feature of some language families, not a rule for all. Many languages around the world simply don’t have a large, open class of words that fit this specific profile. Instead, they cleverly use other parts of speech to do the descriptive heavy lifting.
The Verb Solution: When “To Be Red” is an Action
One of the most common ways languages express properties without adjectives is by using stative verbs. While most verbs we think of are dynamic (they describe an action like run, jump, or eat), stative verbs describe a state or condition. In English, words like know, love, seem, and exist are stative.
In many languages, properties like “big”, “red”, “hot”, or “heavy” are expressed as verbs. Instead of saying “the ball is red”, you might say something that translates more literally to “the ball reds” or “the ball is-in-a-state-of-redness”.
A fantastic example comes from Igbo, a language spoken in Nigeria. To express “The ball is big”, you would say:
Bọọlụ ahụ buru ibu.
Here, buru ibu isn’t an adjective; it’s a verb phrase that literally means “to carry bigness” or “to be of size”. The property of “bigness” is expressed through a verbal concept. The same goes for color. To say “The house is red”, you might say something like “Ụlọ ahụ na-acha ọbara ọbara”, which means “The house is coloring red”. Color isn’t a static quality; it’s a state the house is in.
Similarly, in many varieties of Chinese, words we translate as adjectives can function directly as verbs. To say “The weather is hot”, you say:
天氣很熱 (Tiānqì hěn rè)
Here, 熱 (rè – hot) acts as the main verb of the sentence. There’s no need for a “to be” verb like in English. The property of being hot is itself the predicate.
The Noun Solution: Describing with “Thing-ness”
Another common strategy is to use nouns to express properties. This might seem strange at first, but we do it in English in limited ways, like in “a brick house” or “a family car”. Some languages take this concept and run with it for all their descriptive needs.
In these languages, there isn’t a word for “big”, but there might be a noun for “bigness” or “a big one”. There isn’t a word for “beautiful”, but there is for “beauty” or “a beautiful one”.
Hausa, another major language of West Africa, masterfully blends this nominal strategy with verbs. To say “He is a tall man”, you could say:
Shi dogo ne.
In this sentence, dogo is not an adjective meaning “tall”. It’s a noun meaning “a tall person”. The sentence literally translates to “He is a tall-one”. When used to modify another noun, it still behaves like a noun: dogo mutum means “a tall-one man”.
To describe a state like “coldness”, Hausa often uses a verb and a noun together. For “The water is cold”, you say:
Ruwan ya yi sanyi.
This breaks down to: “The water (ruwan) it (ya) did (yi) coldness (sanyi)”. The property of being cold is expressed as having “done coldness”. The description is achieved through the combination of a verb and a noun, with no adjective in sight.
Why This Linguistic Quirky Matters
Learning that adjectives aren’t a linguistic universal does more than just provide a fun trivia fact. It fundamentally challenges our perspective on language.
- It fights linguistic ethnocentrism. It’s easy to assume the structure of our own language is the default or the most “logical”. Realizing that vast numbers of people communicate with entirely different grammatical toolkits is a humbling and important lesson in diversity.
- It showcases human ingenuity. The universal human need is to describe the world. The fact that different languages have evolved such different strategies—verbs of state, nouns of quality—to solve the same problem is a testament to the creativity and flexibility of the human mind.
- It blurs the lines we take for granted. Is “red” a quality something possesses (adjective), a state it’s in (verb), or a concept it’s associated with (noun)? The answer, it turns out, depends entirely on the language you speak. It suggests that our grammatical categories might shape our perception of reality in subtle ways.
So, can a language have no adjectives? Absolutely. Languages like Igbo, Hausa, Korean, and many Indigenous languages of the Americas demonstrate that the “adjective” category is optional. They get the job done by assigning descriptive duties to their verbs and nouns.
The next time you call a ball “big” and “red”, take a moment to appreciate the simple elegance of English adjectives. But also remember that just over the linguistic horizon, a speaker might be saying that the ball “is-in-a-state-of-bigness” and “carries-the-quality-of-redness”—and their description is just as rich, valid, and complete as our own.