A Russian adjective agrees with its noun in gender, number, and case. The dictionary form is the masculine nominative singular (новый). To describe a feminine, neuter, or plural noun, or a noun in another case, you swap the ending. Most adjectives are hard-stem like новый; a smaller group is soft-stem like синий.

Nominative endings

Start here: the ending changes with the gender and number of the noun. Stressed-ending adjectives (молодой) differ from новый only in the masculine.

• The adjective takes its gender and case from the noun, not from the sentence's subject.
• Plural endings are the same for all three genders.
• In this exercise, typing е instead of ё is accepted.

The full pattern for новый ("new"). Masculine and neuter share every ending except the nominative and accusative. *In the accusative, masculine and plural equal the nominative for things and the genitive for people/animals.

The genitive/accusative -ого ending is spelled with г but pronounced as if it were в.

Soft-stem adjectives like синий ("dark blue") take the soft counterpart of every ending: -ий/-ее/-яя/-ие in the nominative, then -его, -ему, -им, -ем and so on.

Two rules override the hard endings after certain consonants.

• After г, к, х, ж, ш, ч, щ you write и, never ы (русский, большие).
• After ж, ш, ч, щ, ц an unstressed о in the ending becomes е (хорошее), but a stressed ending keeps о (большо́е).