Shouldn't the adjective agree in this context?

Hello everyone,
I find this sentence in my textbook :
« Parce que les gens ne sont pas sympa. »
It seems to me that this «sympa» should be «sympas» , because its subject is « les gens», which is plural.
I'm confused. Is this a typo, or are there cases where the adjective and the noun don't agree, or perhaps am I totally wrong? Please help.

Thank you in advance.

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Permalink Reply by Clare Goubin on January 9, 2012 at 2:41pm

Hi Joll,

If the full form of "sympa" i.e. "sympathique" were used, it would definitely take an "s" to agree with the noun in number: "ils ne sont pas sympathiques".

As a short form of the word, "sympa" may be used either with or without the "s". I have seen it mostly used without, but it seems that both are accepted. (But NB the short form would never agree in terms of gender.)

There is a fairly full explanation of this on the wordreference forum if you need more info.

Hope this helps.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on January 9, 2012 at 5:18pm

As in general with adjectives that don't "sound like normal French words" for whatever reason (either loanwords or shortened forms as in this case), dictionaries at least tend to assume that they're invariable-- in other words, you never add any agreement. So you would write "des hommes sexy", "des gens sympa" etc.

However, this is to some extent an assumption or invention on the part of dictionary editors and prescriptive grammarians that isn't based on actual data. As Clare says, if you look at actual usage, you'll find that-- at least in fairly informal types of writing-- people do in reality sometimes add the "s". So people would sometimes write "des hommes sexys", "des gens sympas" etc.

I don't think it matters terribly much: pick whichever option you prefer and stick with it, but be consistent with whichever you choose (so don't write, e.g. "des gens sexys et sympa", because that mixes the two 'rules').

If you choose not to make the agreement on these adjectives, then you'll be agreeing with most dictionaries, so it will be difficult for a prescriptivist reader or Mrs Thistlebottom the teacher/examiner to decide that you 'got it wrong'. On the other hand, this choice isn't actually based on actual usage data-- it's just an arbitrary preference at the end of the day.