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Long and Short Forms of Adjectives
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So far we
learned how to form long adjectives (красивый - beautiful,
лёгкий - easy). In addition, Russian adjectives have a
short form. To be more precise, only qualitative adjectives may
have both long and short forms (лёгкий - лёгок, красивый - красив).
In today's conversational Russian the usage of long adjectives if
preferred. However, you will most likely have to use the short
form of an adjective in the end of a sentence. For example:
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Long
adjective |
Correct usage
(short form) |
Wrong usage
(long form) |
занятый
(occupined) |
Эта комната
занята.
(This room is occupied.) |
Эта комната
занятая.
|
согласный
(agree) |
Я с Вами согласен.
(I agree with you.) |
Я с Вами
согласный.
|
Short adjectives change only by gender and number; they do not change by
case as long adjectives do. Singular masculine short adjectives do not
have an ending, singular feminine adjectives end in -a,
and singular neuter adjectives end in -o. All plural
short adjectives end in -ы.
Endings for short
adjectives
(stressed vowels are underlined)
|
Singular |
Plural
(any gender)
(-ы) |
masculine
(no
ending) |
neuter
(-o) |
feminine
(-а) |
весел
молод |
весело
молодо |
весела
молода |
веселы
молоды |
Short adjectives usually describe temporary qualities, as opposed to
long adjectives that refer to constant and general qualities. For
example, we say:
Ольга -- счастливая девушка.
(Olga is a happy girl.) -- constantly
Вчера вечером она была очень счастлива.
(She was very happy last night.) -- temporarily
|
Remember !
There are no
short forms for the adjectives
большой and
маленький. Use short forms for the adjectives
великий and малый instead, i.e.
the words велик and
мал respectively. |
Short adjectives can also refer to qualities with respect to a
particular person, thing or circumstances. For example:
Папин костюм сыну велик.
(The father's suit is big for the son.)
You already know that masculine short adjectives have no endings. But
there is a special rule to form a short form of those masculine
adjectives that become too hard to pronounce. In this case you should
add a letter O before the
last K, and letter E
before the last H. Consider the following examples:
O before K:
|
низкий - низoк
("низк" is hard to pronounce because it has two consecutive
consonants in the end)
|
E before H:
|
трудный - трудeн
("трудн" is also hard to pronounce) |
There are no short forms for the adjectives
большой (big) and маленький (small).
Use short forms for the adjectives великий (great) and
малый (small) instead. These forms change by gender and
number as follows (stressed vowels underlined):
- for большой (великий):
|
masculine singular: |
велик |
|
feminine singular: |
велика |
|
neuter singular: |
велико |
|
plural: |
велики |
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|
- for маленький (малый):
|
masculine singular: |
мал |
|
feminine singular: |
мала |
|
neuter singular: |
мало |
|
plural: |
малы |
Some Russian adjectives do not have a short form. In general, those
are adjectives formed from nouns and ending in:
- -ский (братский, дружеский)
- -овой, -евой (деловой, боевой)
- -ной, -ный, -ний (главный, лишний, поздний)
There is also the short adjective рад (glad)
that does not have a long form.
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