Severn Spanish

Comparatives I

 

Introduction

We are a competitive species. There is no getting around it. We need some way to compare ourselves, to say, “My car is better than yours.” Totally kidding. But comparatives are words that let you do stuff like that. If you want.

 

More and Less

There are two main ways these two are used: to talk about qualities (“She is more beautiful than he is”) and to talk about quantities (“I have more Cheetos than you do”).

Let’s start with qualities. These range from physical traits (height, weight, etc.) to personal traits (intelligence, seriousness, funniness) to pretty much any adjective you can think of. There are two basic structures you should know.

 

 

 

 

The way you use these is simple. The blanks get filled with the adjective you want to compare. An important note: in Spanish, there is no such thing as the word “shorter,” only “more short.” So these formulas work with almost any adjective you want. Here are some examples:

Yo soy más bonita que ella. (“I am prettier than her.” Literally, “I am more pretty than her.” Make sure that the adjective agrees with the subject of the sentence — the first person listed. Because I am a girl, bonita agrees with my gender. It does not matter whether the second person is a boy, or multiple people. The adjective agrees with the subject.)

Ellos son más bajos que tú. (“They are shorter than you.” Literally, “They are more short than you.”)

Ella es más talentosa que él. (“She is more talented than him.”)

Now we can move on to comparing quantities, or amounts of things. In this setting, menos can be translated as either “less” or “fewer,” depending on context. The formulas are exactly the same as above, but instead of filling in the blanks with adjectives, you fill them with nouns.

Examples:

Yo como más uvas que tú. (“I eat more grapes than you.”)

Ella tiene más amigos que nosotros. (“She has more friends than us.”)

 

Better and worse

There are two words that are particularly useful: mejor  and peor. They can, however, be a little bit confusing, just because they have so many different uses. First, we will focus on using them as adverbs to say "better" and "worse." As adverbs, these words do not have plural forms. That is why it is so important to understand the distinction between uses and be able to tell when these words function as which part of speech. As a quick reminder, adverbs are used to modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. For now, we will focus on these words as adverbs that modify verbs. The best way to understand this is by going through plenty of examples, so here you go:

Examples:

Ella canta mejor que yo. (She sings better than I do.)

Yo bailo peor que él. (I dance worse than he does.)

Now, let's take a look at these two used as adjectives. They are typically preposed, meaning they come before the nouns, not after. And remember to make sure they agree with their nouns in number when you start working with them yourself. Here are some examples:

Examples:

Yo tengo mejores notas que tú. (I have better grades than you.)

Este coche es peor que ese coche. (This car is worse than that car.)

For more on mejor and peor, see Superlatives I.

 

Practice