Adjectives are words used to describe nouns. For example, the soft cheese; the blue bird; the busy street.

In English we have a very easy time with adjectives because they don't change their spelling depending on the type of noun or their place in the sentence. Russian has a way of complicating everything so the spelling of each adjective will depend on the 'gender' of the noun it describes and the position of the noun in the sentence.

To make things simple (this is an introduction to adjectives after all!), we will only discuss how the gender of a noun modifies the preceding adjective. If we showed you in detail how each adjective can take one of 25 different endings then you might be tempted to throw in the towel :) Don't worry, eventually you will master it all, but the happiest way to learn Russian is gradually, one rule at a time.

We will first illustrate the basic properties of adjectives using a colour adjective (i.e., white).