Questions & Answers about Восточный город большой и новый.
Why is there no word for "is" in this sentence?
In Russian, the present tense of the verb "to be" (is, am, are) is almost always skipped. You just put the subject (город) and what it is (большой и новый) side by side.
How do I know that город (city) is a masculine noun?
You can usually tell a Russian noun's gender by its last letter. Words ending in a consonant, like the д in город, are almost always masculine. Because of this, all the adjectives describing it (Восточный, большой, новый) must use masculine endings.
Why does большой end in -ой, but новый and Восточный end in -ый?
All three are masculine adjectives, but their spelling changes depending on the spoken stress. When the stress falls on the very last syllable, the masculine ending is -ой (like большой). When the stress is earlier in the word, the ending is usually -ый (like новый).
Since Russian doesn't use "is", how do we know this means "The city is big" instead of just "the big city"?
Word order gives us the clue! If you want to say "the big city", you usually put the adjective before the noun: большой город. By putting the adjectives after the noun here (город большой и новый), it acts as a complete statement: "the city is big and new".