Russian Adjectives

Most of the adjectives are derived from nouns or have a noun related to them.

· Русь --> русский

· Америка --> американский

· длина --> длинный

· синь --> синий

Adjectives are qualifiers. They qualify the nouns. Adjectives in Russian are classified first as qualitative, relative and possessive and for the qualitative only as long and short.

Classes of Adjectives

Qualitative adjectives have the ability to create comparative and superlative degrees. For example, красный / red and длинный / long can have the forms краснее, самый красный / redder, the reddest, and длиннее, самый длинный / longer , the longest. They also go well with the word очень / very. For instance очень длинный / very long. Finally, they can form nouns and adverbs. For example,

· весёлый (adj.) / merry, funny --> весёлость (n.) / ability to have fun to be merry or

· весёлый (adj.) / merry, funny --> весело (adv.) / merrily, funnily.

Relative adjectives denote the material that objects are made of. For example, деревянный / wooden, стальной / made of steel. Obviously, they do not have degrees of comparison and do not go with the word очень / very.

Possessive adjectives show some possession, or belonging. For example, русский / Russian shows the characteristic of belonging to Russia. Certainly they cannot be "more Russian" and they do not work well with the word очень / very. They also look like they are coming from the nouns - names of places, times, countries, and ethnic groups: Венгрия --> венгерский / Hungary --> Hungarian.

The next classification level is long and short. This concerns both the form and the function of the adjective. The long adjectives have full endings.

The Long Form Adjectives

	Singular	Plural
Masculine	синий / blue красный / red русский / Russian	синие красные русские
Feminine	синяя красная русская	синие красные русские
Neuter	синее красное русское	синие красные русские

The short form

The short form adjectives have shortened endings - that is why they are called short. Short forms exists not for all adjectives, but only for the quantitative ones (and not for all).

· красный --> красен (masc., sing.)

· красная --> красна (fem., sing.)

· красное --> красно (neut., sing.)

· красные --> красны (pl.)

Both long and short adjectives change depending on the gender, number, and case of the noun they define.

In this lesson you may see possessive adjectives showing ethnic origin or nationality:

· китайский (from China, made in China, Chinese)

· японский (from Japan, made in Japan, Japanese)

· немецкий (from Germany, made in Germany, German)

Here is how it is done:

Countries	Nationalities
Корея (Korea)	корейский (Korean)
Германия (Germany)	германский , немецкий (German)
Америка (USA)	американский (American)
Россия (Russia)	русский (Russian)
Китай (China)	китайский (Chinese)
Япония (Japan)	японский (Japanese)
Италия (Italy)	итальянский (Italian)
Турция (Turkey)	турецкий (Turkish)

Note: Please notice that in written form the name of the country is capitalized but the adjective derived from it is NOT capitalized.