6.6 The easy ones: **invariable** adjectives (no agreement at all)
6 · Adjectives — describing things · a plain-language guide to Assyrian (Sureth) grammar
Here's the relief: a large group of adjectives never change — same word for a man, a woman, or a crowd. Invariable just means "one fixed form, always." Two groups:
A few native (Aramaic) ones, mostly words that started life as nouns:
| adjective | meaning | m / f / pl all the same |
|---|---|---|
| kurba | near | beta kurba · mata kurba · matvate kurba |
| kherba | bad | urza kherba · bakhta kherba · nashe kherba |
| rekhka | distant | beta rekhka · mata rekhka |
| amku | deep | yama amku "a deep sea" · miyya amku "deep water" |
And — the big one — most loanwords. When an adjective is borrowed (from Persian, Azeri, Kurdish, Arabic…) it usually just sits there unchanged. Since a lot of common descriptive words are borrowed, this is a real shortcut:
- taza "fresh, new" · tambal "lazy" · arzan "cheap" · hazer "ready"
- ashkara "clear, obvious" · duz "straight, right" · narahat "uncomfortable"
You can use these with any noun and never touch the ending. When you learn a new descriptive word and it sounds Persian/Azeri/Kurdish, a safe first guess is that it's invariable.
(Khan also lists "partly adapted" loans that take a plural -e but keep one form for m/f — a middle case. For speaking, treat borrowed adjectives as invariable and you'll rarely be wrong; the plural -e will feel natural if it comes.)
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