Russian Adjectives: Endings, Agreement and Case Chart

A Russian adjective has to match its noun on three things at once: gender, number and case. Written down like that it sounds like the worst table in the language. It is not, and the reason is that there is essentially one set of adjective endings, shared by nearly every adjective you will ever use, and it is far more regular than the noun endings you have already met in the Russian cases.

The four nominative forms

Start with the form you see in a dictionary and the three that sit beside it. Take новый (novyy, new):

Four forms, and the plural is already a relief: gender disappears in the plural, so the same ending serves a group of houses, books or windows. The masculine form is the one the dictionary lists, and it comes in three flavours that decline in almost the same way:

• -ый, the ordinary hard stem: но́вый, ста́рый, краси́вый.
• -ой, the same ending when the stress falls on it: большо́й, молодо́й, друго́й. Only the masculine nominative (and the accusative that copies it) looks different; every other form matches the -ый type, subject to the spelling rules below (больши́е, други́е).
• -ий, for two different reasons, covered below: хоро́ший and ма́ленький because of a spelling rule, and после́дний because its stem is soft.

The full case chart

Here is но́вый in every case. It is the only table on this page worth learning by heart, because almost every Russian adjective follows it.

Now count the forms rather than the cells, the same trick that makes the noun tables shrink. Masculine and neuter are identical everywhere except the nominative and accusative. Feminine is но́вой in four of its six cases. The plural uses но́вых three times over. Twenty-four cells, twelve distinct endings.

The two-way cells in the accusative are the animacy rule you already know from nouns: for a masculine noun naming a person or an animal, and for any plural of people or animals, the accusative copies the genitive. So a new table is но́вый in the accusative, but a new friend is но́вого:

Я ви́жу но́вый дом. (Ya vizhu novyy dom.) - I see a new house.

Я ви́жу но́вого дру́га. (Ya vizhu novogo druga.) - I see a new friend.

The adjective follows the noun's lead. If the noun uses its genitive form, the adjective does too.

The shortcut: the endings copy the pronoun он

This is the single most useful thing to know about Russian adjectives, and the tables rarely point it out. The oblique endings are the endings of the third-person pronoun, lightly disguised:

Его́ and -ого, ему́ and -ому, им and -ым, их and -ых. If you know how to say him, to him and with them, you already know most of the adjective chart.

One pronunciation point hides in that column. The г in -ого and -его is pronounced as a в, so но́вого sounds like novovo and его́ sounds like yevo. Spelling it with a г is a fossil; saying it with a hard g is a beginner's giveaway.

Two spelling rules, and the soft adjectives

Most of what looks irregular in Russian adjectives is spelling, not grammar.

Rule one: no ы after г, к, х, ж, ш, ч or щ. Russian writes и instead. That is why ма́ленький (small) and хоро́ший (good) end in -ий in the dictionary, and why their plurals are ма́ленькие and хоро́шие. Nothing about the grammar has changed; the letter has.

Rule two: no unstressed о after ж, ш, ч or щ. It becomes е. So the neuter of хоро́ший is хоро́шее, and its masculine genitive is хоро́шего. Where the о carries the stress, as in большо́й, it stays: большо́е, большо́го.

A genuinely soft adjective is a different thing: its stem ends in a soft consonant, almost always н, and every hard vowel in the chart swaps for its soft partner. Последний (last) is the one you will meet first:

Same pattern, softened. There are only a few dozen soft adjectives in common use, and most of them are about time or place, so they arrive slowly and you can learn each as it comes.

Adjectives in the other cases, in real sentences

The chart becomes useful the moment prepositions arrive, because every preposition decides a case and the adjective simply follows it:

в но́вом до́ме (v novom dome) - in the new house (prepositional)

о но́вой кни́ге (o novoy knige) - about the new book (prepositional)

у но́вого дру́га (u novogo druga) - at the new friend's (genitive)

The genitive also turns up in a set of everyday wishes, where a verb meaning I wish you has quietly fallen away and left its case behind: Хоро́шего дня! is have a good day, and Споко́йной но́чи! is good night. Compare До́брое у́тро and До́брый ве́чер, which are plain nominatives because they are greetings rather than wishes. If you have ever wondered why good night has a different ending from good morning, that is the answer.

Short adjectives: рад, готов, должен

Many Russian adjectives also have a short form, made by lopping off the ending: готовый (ready) becomes гото́в, гото́ва and гото́вы. Short forms agree in gender and number but never decline for case, and they do only one job: they are the predicate, the thing being said about the subject.

Я рад. (Ya rad.) - I am glad. (a man speaking)

Она́ гото́ва. (Ona gotova.) - She is ready.

Мы должны́ идти́. (My dolzhny idti.) - We have to go.

For most adjectives the short form is a stylistic choice, and in ordinary speech the long form works as a predicate too: Дом большо́й is perfectly natural. But a few adjectives are almost always short in that position, and рад has no long form at all. До́лжен, the everyday way to say must, works the same way: its long form means something else entirely. Learn those as vocabulary, in all three forms, and do not try to build them from a long form.

Where the adjective goes

Before the noun, as in English. And here the missing verb to be earns its keep. Because the present tense of быть is invisible, word order is what separates a phrase from a sentence:

большо́й дом - a big house (a phrase)

Дом большо́й. - The house is big. (a complete sentence)

No verb, no article, and still no ambiguity: the order tells you which one you are looking at.

Some adjectives have turned into nouns and kept their adjective endings. Полице́йский means a police officer, выходно́й is a day off, and да́нные is data. They decline exactly like но́вый, which is one more reason the chart repays the effort.

The adjectives to learn first, and how they compare

Frequency is lopsided with adjectives, as with everything else. A dozen of them carry most of what a beginner needs to say, and they come in natural pairs:

Learn them in pairs and in the feminine as well as the masculine, because a feminine noun turns up in almost every other sentence.

Comparison is gentler than the case chart. The commonest comparatives are single words that never change at all, whatever the gender, number or case: лу́чше (better), ху́же (worse), бо́льше (bigger, more) and ме́ньше (smaller, less). Than is either чем or, more neatly, the genitive of the thing compared: Он ста́рше бра́та, he is older than his brother. For the superlative, put са́мый in front and let it agree like any other adjective: са́мый ва́жный вопро́с, the most important question. The comparison with the genitive is that case doing yet another job, and one more reason it is worth learning early.

Mistakes English speakers make

Using the dictionary form for everything. English adjectives never change, so the instinct is to reach for но́вый whatever follows it. Но́вый книга is the most common beginner error in Russian, and it is wrong on sight: feminine noun, feminine adjective, но́вая кни́га.

Forgetting animacy in the accusative. Я ви́жу новый друг treats the friend as a table. A masculine person in the accusative takes the genitive form, adjective and all: Я ви́жу но́вого дру́га.

Pronouncing -ого́ with a g. Say но́вого as novovo. The г is spelling only.

Writing ы after the seven letters. Хорошый and маленькый do not exist. After г, к, х, ж, ш, ч and щ it is always и.

Building a long form of рад. There is no радый. Я рад is the whole of it, and a woman says Я ра́да.

What to do next

Learn the но́вый chart, then read it against the pronoun он until the resemblance is obvious; after that, most of the table is recall rather than memory. Drill the short forms рад, гото́в and до́лжен as three-word sets, because you will use them in the first week of speaking.

The possessives мой, твой and наш take adjective-like endings in most cases (моего́ like но́вого, моему́ like новому), though their nominatives are shorter, which is where Russian possessive pronouns picks the story up, and the genitive endings on this page are the same case covered in full in the Russian genitive case. The Russian course puts adjectives like хоро́ший, большо́й and но́вый in front of you in real sentences from the first chapters.