# красивый/красив/красивые/красивы



## ka_

what's the difference in the meaning of these sentences?

Вы очень красивый
Вы очень красив
Вы очень красивые
Вы очень красивы


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## rusita preciosa

The meaning is the same. The short form of adjectives is used in higher register speech. The full form is more colloquial.


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## Maroseika

Вы очень красивый - you (singular, polite form, masculine) are very nice
Вы очень красив 
Вы очень красивые - you (plural) are very nice
Вы очень красивы - you (singular, polite form, masculine and feminine) are very nice


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## rusita preciosa

ka_ said:


> what's the difference in the meaning of these sentences?
> Singular (polite)
> Вы очень красивый
> Вы очень красивы
> Plural:
> Вы очень красивые
> Вы очень красивы


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## ka_

thank you for explaining!


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## Explorer41

As for me, I'd choose the 4th sentence in most cases (the first one - maybe in a jocular manner; as of the second one, I don't know what to do with it; and concerning the third one, the word "красивый" here sounds better with a noun - "Вы очень красивый человек").

Generally, the difference between a short adjective and a full adjective is that a short adjective may be used only as a predicate whereas a full adjective may be used as an attribute as well. In the predicative role they differ subtly, the difference is hard to explain and you often may use both. I could say (it is only my feeling, nothing more!) that a short adjective describes a quality of a thing, and a full adjective classifies that thing together with other things sharing that quality.


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## marco_2

I was taught that for some adjectives there is a difference in meaning, e.g.

*Он больной *(a permanent disease)
*Он болен *(a temporary disease)

*Она хорошая *(she is a good woman)
*Она хороша *(she is pretty)

Am I right?


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## Explorer41

marco_2, you are right.


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## ahvalj

Explorer41 said:


> In the predicative role they differ subtly, the difference is hard to explain and you often may use both. I could say (it is only my feeling, nothing more!) that a short adjective describes a quality of a thing, and a full adjective classifies that thing together with other things sharing that quality.



I wouldn't generalize this way: the difference you mention is observed only in a limited set of adjectives, those migrating from one grammar to another. For the vast majority of cases the difference is entirely stylistic — some short adjectives (especially with the monosyllabic stem in the masculine form) are more rare even in the written language («он нов» is strange, but the rhythmically longer «он не нов» or occasionally even «он был нов» is OK), whereas other (longer ones, «свободен», «наряден», «волосат») have no such limitations. The general trend is that the spoken language tries to get rid of the short forms, starting with the phonetically shortest ones, while the written language with a more or less success withstands this. Especially the polite form «вы/Вы» requires a short adjective in the written form («вы красивы», whereas «а вы красивый» is spoken).


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## ahvalj

By the way, a historical note™. The etymologically original adjectives are continued in the short ones; until some 1000 years ago they were used in the majority of cases. The long adjectives where originally compound, formed by adding the word "which" to the end of the short form; both parts were originally declining separately: «новъ — новъи», «нова — новаꙗ», «ново — новоѥ» ("new — new-which"); «нова — новаѥго (> новааго > новаго)», «новы — новыѣ», etc. The same thing happened in the Baltic languages. With time, the second element tended to fuse to the stem, but the details and the extent to which this occurred differ across the Slavic languages (say, Russian and Byelorussian still preserve the forms like «новая, новую», while in the most other languages they have shortened). This fusion made original and compound adjectives phonetically similar and more than anything else contributed to the disappearance of either form (simplifying, short adjectives won in Bulgarian and Macedonian, long ones in the remaining languages, with the Serbo-Croatian still in the process).

The original meaning of the compound (> long) adjectives was not the definiteness of the noun as in the modern Serbo-Croatian or Latvian and as researches familiar with the definite and indefinite articles often postulate, but the definiteness of the adjective itself — as the meaning of the word "which" suggests an as it is still in the Lithuanian language. So, «зелено ꙗблъко» originally meant both "a green apple" and "the green apple", but «зеленоѥ ꙗблъко» stood for "an/the apple which is green". The same in the modern Lithuanian: «žalias obuolys» versus «žaliasis obuolys». In English this meaning can be occasionally expressed by placing the adjective after the noun and preceding it with the definite article "Peter the Great" ("Peter which is great, which stands out by its greatness"). The strong and weak adjectives in the Germanic languages had originally exactly the same difference in meaning, only the emphasis was expressed not by adding "which" to the original form, but by using the suffix "-n-", which served a similar role since the Indo-European times (say, in Greek "platys","broad" but "platon", "the square-built one")


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## Sobakus

Thanks for your very interesting insight, *ahvalj*!


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## Explorer41

*ahvalj,* Thank you for your notes. You are convincing, and I agree with you: I'd say "Король голый" ("The king is naked") even if I just name his quality. And I see now that the choice between short and full forms of an adjective is often a euphony issue.

Would you please clarify, what do mean your words "migrating from one grammar to another"? When I wrote that post, I was thinking about adjectives "тёмный", "длинный". ("ночь тёмная, вроде ночей в Севастополе" vs "ночь темна, как ночи в Севастополе" - very slight difference, but it exists). But I can't imagine where and how are they migrating...

Thank you...


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## ahvalj

I meant that there is a number of words with this distinction between a permanent/transient quality, and many of them are cited in any grammar (a very typical situation with the secondary literature when examples listed by some previous authors are then repeated for decades from one work to another — that is what I call migration). 

I agree that such words exist, but I just would like to point out that this distinction is far from universal. As it often happens with overlapping words and grammatical categories, the short and long adjectives develop some random subtle differences in meaning, this difference being one of such variants. After the polite «вы», for example, this doesn't work even with «больны» or «хороши» («Иван Иванович, вы больны» may mean both a permanent and a transient quality).


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## F. Julien

Thank you very much for this answer.
If I understand, the polite "*Вы*" behaves in fact, morphologically, like "*он*", in all situations, yes?
Therefore, one should say to a _lady_:
"Вы очень элегантн*ый*" (or "элегантн*ы*"), because the polite *Вы *form _grammatically_ behaves like third person singular *masculine *-- regardless of the fact that one is adressing a lady.
Is that correct?


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## Maroseika

F. Julien said:


> Thank you very much for this answer.
> If I understand, the polite "*Вы*" behaves in fact, morphologically, like "*он*", in all situations, yes?


No, it behaves as the 3rd person singular depending on the gender: 
Вы очень элегантная (to a lady) or элегантный (to a gentleman). 
But in short form we should use plural form with both genders: элегантны. 

By the way, with verbs polite Вы behaves like plural вы: Вы приехали, не хотите ли Вы.


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## F. Julien

Thank you for this precise and very helpful answer! Now I get it. 
Спасибо Вам огромное.
С уважением


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## Lorenc

I would like to ask a comment on the short adjective суеверны in the following sentence (taken from the short story Как убили дракона by Buzzati):
И пояснил, что жители Палиссано очень* суеверны* и ежедневно отправляют в Бурель козу, чтобы задобрить чудовище.

The question is: would the long form *суеверные* be incorrect or sound awkward? I'm asking because I'm inclined to think that being superstitious is an intrinsic characteristic (always the same) rather than a temporary one such as being hungry, tired, free (=not busy) etc


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## Vovan

Lorenc said:


> The question is: would the long form *суеверные* be incorrect or sound awkward?


I don't think that it's incorrect per se, but the short form sounds somewhat better. I guess that it's the adverb of degree "очень" that brings about the use of the short form. Cf.:

_Она довольно/весьма/очень... умна/богата/красива/набожна... _​
I'd say that pragmatically we're dealing here with a _conservative assessment_ (trying to be objective and polite). The adverb of degree, by the way, may only be implied.

P. S. Actually, there are _many _subtle criteria that define the right/optimal choice between the full and short adjectival forms (see [1], [2]).


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## nizzebro

Lorenc said:


> would the long form *суеверные* be incorrect or sound awkward?


In more or less formal context as that you have provided, yes, it would be odd. However, in informal speech, people often use the long form instead of the short one. Phrases such as 'Моя мама очень суеверная'  are common. The short form of pure adjectives (non-participles) is seldom  used informally (except a set of words with their own stable semantics such as 'болен'), probably because the short form has its flaws (e.g. the feminine form 'суеверна' sounds as if an adverbial).



Lorenc said:


> I'm asking because I'm inclined to think that being superstitious is an intrinsic characteristic (always the same) rather than a temporary one such as being hungry, tired, free (=not busy) etc



I would say the core difference between these forms is not that the short one is about a temporary, non-permanent quality but, first of all, relativity of the quality as estimated by the speaker, using some range; the long form, on the contrary, marks the described quality as a pure attribute, sort of subcategory of the bound noun. Once you can apply a degree to the adjective it can have a short form.  'Очень суеверный' means that every little thing can make this person think what to do next. 'Немного суеверный' - there's a few superstitions he or she has, being in general an ordinary person.
By the way, 'болен' is a temporary state but we can say 'немного болен', 'очень болен', 'совсем не болен'.


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## Awwal12

Vovan said:


> I don't think that it's incorrect per se, but the short form sounds somewhat better.


Only in a formal/literary context. In colloquial speech, on the other hand, it would sound out of place. Colloquial Russian generally avoids short forms and those constructions where they have to be used (although, of course, it still uses them; after all, the choice is always lexically dependent; cf. ???я виноватый or ???он злой на меня).


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## nizzebro

One more idea comes to me, about informal usage of attributive adjectives in predicative position.
 The sentence I've provided, "Моя мама очень суеверная" is not the only one possible. It also could be rephrased as:

1. У меня мама очень суеверная. (introducing her first)
2. Моя мама такая суеверная. (only describing her)

And here, we can see an attempt to reinforce the attributive semantics -
 in the first sentence, it is implemented by breaking the sentence into logical parts:  У меня мама (ok, we got your mum, what's next? mum of what kind?) очень суеверная.
 In the second sentence, the word  'такая' itself is focused on the attributive sense - as its semantics is not about degree but actually about 'that kind of them' , and that removes the conflict.


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