The famous grid of adjective endings looks like something to survive rather than learn. But almost all of it is one pattern repeated with a single vowel swapped — and half the cells are duplicates of each other.
Published 12 September 2026
Start with the one idea everything hangs on: a regular long-form Russian adjective copies its noun. Whatever gender, number and case the noun is in, the adjective wears a matching ending. Change the noun and the adjective changes with it — that is the whole job of these endings.
| Russian | English | Noun is… |
|---|---|---|
| но́вый дом | a new house | masculine |
| но́вая маши́на | a new car | feminine |
| но́вое сло́во | a new word | neuter |
| но́вые кни́ги | new books | plural |
Same adjective, four endings, because the noun changed underneath it. Get that reflex — match the noun — and the tables stop being a memory test and become a lookup you'll rarely need.
Most Russian adjectives follow this one. The dictionary form ends in -ый, and here is the full set of endings, using но́вый ("new"):
| Case | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | но́вый | но́вая | но́вое | но́вые |
| Accusative | но́вый / но́вого* | но́вую | но́вое | но́вые / но́вых* |
| Genitive | но́вого | но́вой | но́вого | но́вых |
| Dative | но́вому | но́вой | но́вому | но́вым |
| Instrumental | но́вым | но́вой | но́вым | но́выми |
| Prepositional | но́вом | но́вой | но́вом | но́вых |
*The accusative copies the nominative for inanimate nouns and the genitive for animate ones — the same split you already meet with nouns.
It looks like twenty-four things to learn. It isn't. Read the table down the columns and the shortcuts jump out:
A smaller group of adjectives has a "soft" stem; you spot them because the dictionary form ends in -ний, like си́ний ("dark blue"). Here is the secret: the endings are identical to the hard ones, with each vowel replaced by its soft twin — ы becomes и, а becomes я, о becomes е, у becomes ю.
| Case | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | си́ний | си́няя | си́нее | си́ние |
| Accusative | си́ний / си́него* | си́нюю | си́нее | си́ние / си́них* |
| Genitive | си́него | си́ней | си́него | си́них |
| Dative | си́нему | си́ней | си́нему | си́ним |
| Instrumental | си́ним | си́ней | си́ним | си́ними |
| Prepositional | си́нем | си́ней | си́нем | си́них |
Lay it beside the но́вый table and you'll see it's the same skeleton: но́вого → си́него, но́вым → си́ним, но́вая → си́няя. You're not learning a second system, just softening the one you already have. (The v-sound in -его works exactly like -ого: си́него sounds like си́нева.)
Two things make some adjectives look different while behaving the same:
1. Stressed endings are spelled -ой. When the stress lands on the ending itself, the masculine nominative is written -о́й rather than -ый: большо́й (big), молодо́й (young), плохо́й (bad). Don't let it fool you — these are ordinary hard adjectives. They decline just like но́вый: большо́го, большо́му, большо́м.
2. After certain consonants you write и, never ы. Russian never writes ы after г, к, х or the hushers ж, ш, щ, ч. So ру́сский ("Russian") ends in -ий, and its plural is ру́сские, not *ру́сскые. The adjective is still hard; only the spelling of the vowel changes to obey this rule. It's the same reason the plural of большо́й is больши́е.
The endings only matter because they move when the noun does. Watch но́вый follow one noun through a few cases:
| Russian | English | Case |
|---|---|---|
| Э́то но́вый телефо́н. | This is a new phone. | nominative |
| У меня́ нет но́вого телефо́на. | I don't have a new phone. | genitive |
| Я иду́ с но́вым телефо́ном. | I'm going with a new phone. | instrumental |
| Расскажи́ о но́вом телефо́не. | Tell me about the new phone. | prepositional |
Notice the adjective and the noun always rhyme in function even when their exact endings differ — но́вым телефо́ном, но́вом телефо́не. That echo is the thing to listen for; it's how a native ear checks the grammar without thinking about a table.
Give each adjective the right ending for the noun beside it, then check below. Say them aloud — that's where the endings actually stick.
If you matched the ending to the noun's gender, number and case rather than to the English, the system has done its job. The grid you memorise is small; the instinct you build by getting corrected out loud is what makes it automatic — which is exactly the kind of practice we're built for. Start learning Russian — free.
How many adjective endings do I actually have to learn? For the regular long-form adjectives covered here, there are two main sets: the hard pattern (новый) and the soft pattern (синий), and the soft set is just the hard set with each vowel changed to its soft twin. Within either set the masculine and neuter share every single form except the nominative, and the feminine uses one ending — новой / синей — for the genitive, dative, instrumental and prepositional together. So the grid is far smaller than the 24 cells it looks like.
Why is нового pronounced with a v sound? In the adjective genitive (and animate accusative) ending -ого / -его, the letter г is pronounced like an English v. So нового is said as if it were written новова, and синего as if синева. It is only a pronunciation quirk of this one ending; the spelling stays -ого, and other words with г are unaffected.
When does an adjective end in -ой instead of -ый? When the ending itself is stressed. Adjectives like большой (big), молодой (young) and плохой (bad) spell the masculine nominative -ой, but they still decline exactly like новый: большого, большому, большом. The -ой is a spelling reflex of stress, not a separate third pattern to memorise.
Does the adjective really have to change after a preposition too? Yes — the adjective always copies its noun's gender, number and case, prepositions included. In в большом городе (in a big city) both words take the prepositional. You don't drill the grid cold, though: learn a handful of real phrases and the endings start to settle by ear.
PS — the quickest gain here isn't memorising the table, it's training the echo. When you say the noun, let the adjective rhyme with it in case: но́вым телефо́ном, но́вой маши́ной. Do that out loud enough times and the endings arrive on their own.