Adjectives

An adjective describes a noun. That single fact settles most questions, because the usual trap is a word that should have described the verb instead.

1. Order of adjectives. When several stack up, English fixes the order: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. "a beautiful small old round brown wooden dining table" — never the other way round.
2. After a linking verb, use the adjective, not the adverb. With be, seem, look, feel, taste, smell, sound, become the word describes the subject: "The soup tastes good", "She feels bad about it" — not "tastes well", not "feels badly".
3. Countable pairs that flip meaning. a few = some, few = almost none; a little = some, little = almost none. Use few/fewer with countables, little/less with uncountables: fewer students, less water.
4. Fixed confusables. elder/eldest only within a family and never with "than"; older/oldest for everything else. later = time, latter = the second of two. farther = distance, further = additional.

The single most common mistake is stacking intensifiers — "very much beautiful", "very excellent" — carried over from खूप छान and बहुत अच्छा, where the intensifier sits comfortably. In English very much modifies a verb, not an adjective, and an extreme adjective (excellent, perfect, unique, superb) takes no very at all. How to spot it: if the adjective already means "to the highest degree", delete the intensifier or replace it with absolutely.

Order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose · linking verb (look, feel, taste) → adjective · few/fewer countable, little/less uncountable · a few = some, few = almost none · no "very" before excellent/unique/perfect

Choose the correct sentence: (a) "The mangoes taste very much sweetly." (b) "The mangoes taste very sweet." → (b). "Taste" is a linking verb here, so the word after it describes the mangoes, and a describing word for a noun is an adjective: sweet. Sanity check: replace "taste" with "are" — "The mangoes are very sweet" reads perfectly, which confirms the adjective. "Very much" would only work with a verb, as in "I like mangoes very much".