Learn Hardcore Russian: Наш новый начальник очень ответственный и всегда приходит вовремя. - Our new boss is very responsible and always comes on time.

in the past:
Наш новый начальник был очень ответственным. – Our new boss *was very responsible.*
in the future:
Наш новый начальник будет очень ответственным. – Our new boss *will be very responsible.*

So the missing “is” is completely normal Russian grammar.

What case and gender is начальник, and why is ответственный in that form?

Начальник is:
- masculine (even if the boss is a woman, grammatically it’s masculine),
- singular,
- nominative case (subject of the sentence).

Adjectives and pronouns must agree with the noun in gender, number, and case.
So you get:

наш – masculine, singular, nominative
новый – masculine, singular, nominative
начальник – masculine, singular, nominative
ответственный – masculine, singular, nominative

That’s why it’s ответственный, not ответственная or ответственное.

If the boss is a woman, do we still say начальник, or should it be начальница?

Both forms exist, but usage is different:

начальник – grammatically masculine, the default, neutral word for “boss/manager/supervisor”. It can refer to a man or a woman.
- Наш новый начальник очень ответственный. – Could be male or female.
начальница – explicitly female boss, less formal, more colloquial.

If you clearly want to show the boss is a woman, you can say:

Наша новая начальница очень ответственная и всегда приходит вовремя.

Notice how everything changes to feminine:

наша, новая, начальница, ответственная

Why is the word order наш новый начальник, and can I say новый наш начальник?

Наш новый начальник is the neutral, natural order for “our new boss”:

наш (our – possessive pronoun)
новый (new – descriptive adjective)
начальник (boss – noun)

This is the usual order: possessive/adjective(s) → noun.

You can say новый наш начальник, but:

It sounds more marked/expressive, not neutral.
It emphasizes новый (“new”), something like:
“Our boss – the new one – is very responsible.”

So:

Наш новый начальник очень ответственный. – Neutral: Our new boss is very responsible.
Новый наш начальник очень ответственный. – Emphasis on new: This new boss of ours is very responsible.

What is the difference between очень ответственный and очень ответственен?

Both are correct, but they use different forms of the adjective:

очень ответственный – long form adjective
- Most common in everyday speech.
- Works just like English “responsible” as a normal adjective.
- Наш новый начальник очень ответственный.
очень ответственен – short form adjective
- More stylistic/literary, or used for emphasis.
- Often sounds more formal, bookish, or evaluative.
- Наш новый начальник очень ответственен.

Meaning is basically the same, but everyday, neutral Russian will prefer очень ответственный here.

What exactly does ответственный mean here? Is it “responsible for something” or “a responsible person”?

In this sentence, ответственный means “a responsible person” (as a character trait):

someone who takes their duties seriously,
is reliable,
does what they are supposed to do.

Compare two common uses:

Он очень ответственный. – He is very responsible (by character).
Он ответственный за этот проект. – He is *responsible for this project.*

In (2), за introduces what he is responsible for.
In your sentence there’s no за, so it’s about his personal quality, not a specific duty.

Why is it приходит, not идёт or ходит?

All three verbs are related to “going/coming”, but they’re not interchangeable:

идти – to go (by foot) in one specific direction right now
- Он идёт на работу. – He is going to work (now).
ходить – to go (by foot) regularly / back and forth
- Он ходит на работу пешком. – He goes to work on foot (in general).
приходить – to come / arrive (imperfective, repeated/habitual)
- Focuses on arrival.
- Он всегда приходит вовремя. – He always comes/arrives on time.

In your sentence, we talk about a habitual, repeated action of arriving at work or at meetings. That’s exactly what приходит expresses:

всегда приходит = “always comes/arrives” (habit).

What is the difference between приходить and прийти?

They are the imperfective and perfective forms of the same basic verb “to come/arrive”:

приходить – imperfective
- Used for process, repeated, or habitual actions.
- Present tense exists: он приходит – “he comes / he is coming / he comes (regularly)”.
- In your sentence:
  …всегда приходит вовремя. – He always comes on time.
прийти – perfective
- Focuses on completion / result – the moment of arrival.
- No real present tense; its “present form” refers to the future:
  - Он придёт вовремя. – He will come on time (one time).

So:

Он всегда приходит вовремя. – Habitual: He always comes on time.
Он придёт вовремя. – One specific occasion: He will come on time.

What does вовремя literally mean, and is it one word or two?

Вовремя is written as one word and functions as an adverb meaning “on time / in time / punctually”.

Он всегда приходит вовремя. – He always comes on time.

It does not split into во время in this meaning.
Во время as two words usually means “during” when followed by a noun:

Во время встречи он молчал. – During the meeting he was silent.

So:

вовремя (one word) = on time.
во время + noun (two words) = during (something).

What is the role of всегда here, and how is it different from всё время or постоянно?

In the sentence, всегда means “always” in a simple, general sense:

Он всегда приходит вовремя. – He always comes on time.

Comparisons:

всегда – always (no emotional nuance by itself)
- neutral statement of consistency.
всё время – literally “all the time”
- can sound a bit more continuous and sometimes slightly annoyed:
  - Он всё время опаздывает. – He’s late all the time.
постоянно – constantly
- emphasizes constant repetition and often has a stronger emotional color (negative or positive, but often negative):
  - Он постоянно жалуется. – He’s constantly complaining.

So всегда приходит вовремя is a neutral way to say he is always punctual.

Why is there no comma before и in …очень ответственный и всегда приходит вовремя?

In Russian, when you have one subject and two predicates (two things the subject does/is), you do not put a comma before и.

Here:

Subject: Наш новый начальник
Predicate 1: очень ответственный (is very responsible)
Predicate 2: (он) всегда приходит вовремя (always comes on time)

So it’s one combined predicate:

Наш новый начальник очень ответственный и всегда приходит вовремя.

No comma is needed:

✅ …очень ответственный и всегда приходит вовремя.
❌ …очень ответственный, и всегда приходит вовремя. (comma unnecessary here)

Could the word order be Всегда наш новый начальник приходит вовремя, and what would that change?

Yes, Russian word order is relatively flexible, so you can say:

Всегда наш новый начальник приходит вовремя.

But the nuance changes slightly:

Наш новый начальник всегда приходит вовремя. – neutral focus on the boss and his habit.
Всегда наш новый начальник приходит вовремя. – more emphasis on всегда (“always”), like:
- “It is always our new boss who comes on time.”
- or “Our new boss always comes on time (really without exception).”

The original word order is the most neutral and typical; moving всегда to the front adds a shade of emphasis or contrast.

How do you pronounce this sentence correctly? Where are the stresses?

Here is the sentence with stressed syllables marked in uppercase:

НАш но́вый начальНИК О́чень ответСТВЕНный и всегда́ прихО́дит ВО́время.

More systematically (bold marks the stressed vowel):

Наш – НАШ (stress on а)
но́вый – но́-вый
начальник – на-ча́ль-ник
о́чень – о́-чень
ответственный – от-ве́т-ствен-ный
всегда́ – всем-да́
приходит – при-хо́-дит
во́время – во́-вре-мя

Natural speech will join it smoothly:

Наш но́вый начальник о́чень ответственный и всегда́ прихо́дит во́время.