Questions & Answers about Слон очень большой и сильный.
Why is there no word for "is" between слон and its adjectives?
In the present tense, Russian almost always drops the verb "to be". You simply place the subject (слон) and its descriptive adjectives (большой и сильный) together. You will only see a verb here if you change this to the past tense (был) or future tense (будет).
Why does большой end in -ой while сильный ends in -ый when they both describe the same masculine noun?
The difference is determined by where the spoken stress falls. Both are standard masculine singular adjective endings. When the stress lands on the ending itself, it is spelled -ой (as in большой). When the stress is on the root of the word, it takes the unstressed ending -ый or -ий (as in сильный).
If we were talking about a female elephant, would the adjectives change to feminine?
Yes, but you would also have to change the noun itself. The word слон is grammatically masculine and always takes masculine adjectives, regardless of the animal's actual sex. To talk specifically about a female elephant, you use the feminine noun слониха, which makes the sentence Слониха очень большая и сильная.