What someone is like inside (izaera)

After describing what someone looks like physically, the natural next step is to say what they are like inside: their character, their way of being. In Basque these adjectives are also built with izan + adjective + -a, just like the physical ones.

Core character vocabulary

The adjectives almost always come in pairs of opposites:

Basque	English	Opposite
alaia	cheerful	triste (sad — but careful, that’s a state)
jatorra	nice, friendly	—
atsegina	kind, pleasant	—
ona	good	txarra (bad)
isila	quiet	berritsua (chatty)
lasaia	calm	urduria (nervous)
langilea	hard-working	alferra (lazy)
ausarta	brave	beldurtia (fearful)
zintzoa	well-behaved, honest	bihurria (mischievous, naughty)
serioa	serious	—
lotsatia	shy	—
bikaina	excellent, great	—

Many of these adjectives come from a noun + suffix. For example langile comes from lan (“work”); beldurti comes from beldur (“fear”). You don’t have to learn the internal logic at A1, but it will help you memorise them.

Structure: just like the physical ones

• Maialen oso alaia da. — Maialen is very cheerful.
• Egoitz isila eta serioa da. — Egoitz is quiet and serious.
• Gu langileak gara. — We are hard-working.
• Haiek bihurriak dira. — They are mischievous.
• Ni ez naiz oso lotsatia. — I am not very shy.

Chaining several adjectives

A very natural way to introduce someone is to reel off 3-4 traits in a row. Basque does it with the conjunction eta (“and”) only before the last one:

Nire arreba alaia, jatorra eta langilea da.

My sister is cheerful, friendly and hard-working.

”Oso” and “nahiko” to qualify

• oso alaia → very cheerful
• nahiko isila → quite quiet
• ez oso urduria → not very nervous
• ez zara batere alferra → you are not lazy at all (batere reinforces the negation)

Full example

Nire ama oso jatorra eta atsegina da. Lasaia da, baina nire aita urduria da. Anaia bihurri samarra da, baina ni zintzoa naiz!

My mother is very friendly and kind. She is calm, but my father is nervous. My brother is rather mischievous, but I am well-behaved!