Questions & Answers about Хорошая мысль!
Since the current lesson focuses on feminine nouns like мать and дочь, how does мысль fit in?
Just like мать and дочь, мысль is a feminine noun that ends in a soft sign (-ь). These belong to the 3rd declension. You can clearly see it is feminine here because the adjective хорошая takes the feminine ending -ая.
Can Хорошая мысль! be translated as "Good idea!"?
Absolutely. While the literal translation of мысль is "thought", this phrase is one of the most common and natural ways to say "Good idea!" in Russian, used interchangeably with Хорошая идея!.
Why is the feminine ending for хороший spelled as хорошая? Shouldn't soft adjectives take soft endings?
This happens because of the spelling rule for "husher" consonants. After the letters ж, ш, ч, щ, you can never write the vowel я. So, instead of a soft -яя, the adjective must take the standard hard ending -ая, giving us хорошая.
Why doesn't this sentence need a verb to mean "That is a good thought"?
In the present tense, Russian omits the verb "to be". Placing the adjective and noun together in the Nominative case is perfectly sufficient to make an exclamation like "That is a good thought!" or "Good idea!".
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