The Russian word красивый can be used to describe both men and women:
- красивая женщина beautiful woman
- красивая девушка beautiful girl
- красивый мужчина handsome man
- красивый парень handsome young man
Resources for further reading:
Let's check out this lesson on the Beautiful in Russian.
Pronouncing beautiful in Russian
Practice Your Pronunciation With Rocket Record
You will notice, however, that the ending of the word differs when we describe females and males. This is due to grammatical gender. Every noun in Russian has a gender that dictates which adjective variant you have to use with it.
The same word can also be used to describe objects, e.g.:
As you can see from these examples the Russian word красивый - beautiful can describe the appearance of people or things.
But, it can’t be used to describe weather - weather doesn’t have an appearance, in Russian we feel it, instead. So if you want to say 'beautiful weather' or ‘What a beautiful day!’ you can say:
If you’d like to compliment your friend on their appearance you can say: you are beautiful Ты красивая / Вы красивая (We use the feminine form here because we normally compliment women and girls)
Well, that’s it for now. I hope you found that helpful.
Here are a few recommended Russian lessons to try next!
- All about the parts of the body in Russian.
- Renting a car? Know the parts of your car in Russian.
- Shopping is much easier if you know your clothes in Russian!
До скорого! (da skorava)
Natalya Dubrov: Rocket Russian