Thread: Three questions about short adjectives

1. Answered in full above.

2. More examples needed, but from the words you presented there it seems like your dictionary does this for some unknown reason as I can easily give you the plural short form of хороший. Хороши.

3. Russian adjectives form three sub-groups. I'm not sure what the exact translations of those groups would be in English, so I'd just use their Russian names:

Качественные прилагательные - they describe a quality that can be a varying attribute of a noun, changing to a varying degree. E.g. Быстрый - Some people can be very fast, some will be even faster than that, some will be just fast enough to be destinguished as fast but no more.

Относительные прилагательные - they describe a quality that cannot vary in any way. E.g. Правительственный or зубной for that matter. Someone or something can be one of those, but they can't be more/less dental, more governmental, etc.

Притяжательные прилагательные - these are just possesive adjectives, e.g. мамин, папин etc.

Of all those groups only качественные прилагательные have a short form.

Thanks iCake

Another couple of examples of 2. -

худ|ой (~, ~а, ~o) no ~ы but i assume this exists - худы e.g. студенты худы?
цен|ный (~ен, ~на) no ~но or ~ны but i assume e.g. эти ценны is possible?

But I get the general idea. Most likely the dictionary only gives forms which it considers irregular or which cannot be inferred.

Thanks for expanding xXHoax's point about which ones can have a short form. I guess the main point is that in most cases it will just work out alright from the sense - i.e. unconsciously I would not try to use adjectives other than qualitative ones in a short form. Also - I think (according to my grammar book) short adjectives are "bookish" - that is not used so much in speech?

спасибо болшой