Russian · Chapter 8 · Lesson 9 · Grammar primer

Intensifiers

Prescribed by the Edexcel specification.

The short version

Ochen, dovolno and slishkom never change form

All three sit directly in front of the adjective or adverb they strengthen and never agree with anything: ochen (very) is neutral, dovolno (quite) leans positive, slishkom (too) signals a problem. Do not confuse dovolno with dovolnyy, a completely separate adjective meaning satisfied.

Eto slishkom dorogo.

This is too expensive.

ne- glued on flips an adjective to its opposite

Stick ne- straight onto the front of an adjective, no space, and you get its opposite: bolshoy (big) gives nebolshoy (small). Keep it as one word when you mean the plain opposite; split it into ne plus the adjective only when you are directly denying a specific claim.

Eto nebolshoy gorod.

This is a small town.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

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Practice

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10-question session

One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 15 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.

Lesson 9 of 19 in this chapter

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