Do you want to learn how to describe people’s personality in Spanish? This is very useful when you are talking with someone in Spanish. You just need to learn some adjectives and verbs. At the end of the article, you will find some interactive exercises to practice.
How to describe people’s personality in Spanish
The verbs used to describe people’s personality in Spanish are «SER«, (TO BE) in English and «PARECER» (TO APPEAR, TO SEEM) in English.
When we know well the person that we want to describe, we use «SER» but when we don’t know well the person, and we are not sure about how the personality of the person is, we use «PARECER«
EXAMPLES
Juan es un chico paciente / Pablo is a patient boy
Laura parece una chica inteligente / Laura seems an intelligent girl
How to describe people’s personality in Spanish
The intensifiers
| muy | very |
| bastante | quite |
| poco | a bit |
EXAMPLES
María es muy trabajadora / Maria is very hard-working
Juan es bastante simpático / Juan is quite friendly
Usually, we use «un poco» to make softer the adjectives considered negatives.
EXAMPLE
Victor es un poco egoista / Victor is a bit selfish
How to describe people’s personality in Spanish
Here you are the list with the previous personality adjectives and the opposites in English and Spanish.
| divertido/a | funny | aburrido/a | boring |
| abierto/a | open-minded | cerrado/a | closed-minded |
| serio/a | serious | alegre | cheerful |
| simpático/a majo/a | friendly nice | antipático/a | unpleasant nasty |
| tímido/a | shy | extrovertido/a | outgoing |
| trabajador/a | hard-working | perezoso/a | lazy |
| interesante | interesting | aburrido/a | boring |
| inteligente | intelligent | tonto/a | stupid / idiot |
| agradable | nice | desagradable | disagreeable/ unpleasant |
| sociable | sociable | insociable | unsociable |
| paciente | patient | impaciente | impatient |
| responsable | responsible | irresponsable | irresponsible |
| egoista | selfish | generoso/a | generous |
How to describe people’s personality in Spanish
Personality adjectives in Spanish: The gender
In Spanish, adjectives ending in -O are masculine and adjectives ending in -A, are feminine.
Adjectives ending in -ISTA like «egoísta» and adjectives ending in -E like «amable» or «inteligente» can be both masculine and feminine, and they don’t change.
EXAMPLES
Es una mujer egoísta / She is a selfish woman
Es un hombre egoísta / He is a selfish man
Ana es una chica agradable / Ana is a nice girl
Juan es agradable / Juan is nice
How to describe people’s personality in Spanish
INTERACTIVE EXERCISES
EXERCISE 1
Match the opposites vertically
EXERCISE 2
Classify these personality adjectives in positives or negatives
EXERCISE 3
Order these personality adjectives in the three columns: Feminine, masculine and neutral.
This is all, hopefully this article was interesting for you. I will be very grateful if you share it with your Spanish learners friends. Now If you want to keep learning more, check out «how to describe people physically»
