Intro to the comparative and the superlative | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

so we've got these three penguins
grammarians we've got Raul who you may
remember from his sweet Mohawk
we've got Cesare and we've got Gabriela
three Magellanic penguins from Argentina
loop and they are all different amounts
of happy mrs. R is a medium amount of
happy Raul is more happy and Gabriela is
the most happy and in English we have a
way to compare these you know to compare
Raul to Cesare or to compare Raul to
Gabriella or any combination thereof and
we call this comparative and superlative
adjectives and before I get too into the
weeds on that let me let me just show
you what that looks like so okay so we
can say Raul put in the accent Raul is a
happy penguin he's got all the fish he
wants life is good Raul is happier then
says ah this is what we call a
comparative because we're comparing Raul
to Cesare and we're comparing their
happiness levels and Raul has more
happiness in him then says R does
Porsches are however Gabriela is the
happiest penguin the happiest is
something that we call superlative in
English so it's not it's not just a it's
not just a comp it's not just a
comparison right it's not Raul is
happier than says our Gabriele is
happier than all the other penguins she
is the happiest she is the happiest
she's the most happy so one way to think
about this is that Raul's happiness is
slightly larger than says ours happiness
but Gabriela is happiness
you know there's double this double plus
is unbeatably more than both of them I'm
going to use a made-up math symbol
boo-boo-boo like super greater than
onion Oh undisputed she is the happiest
penguin because the comparative is the
same thing as saying more the
comparative equals more and the
superlative equals most so this is
slightly more this is super much more
and something that's neat about English
is you can use the comparative and the
superlative for both positive
relationships and also negative
relationships so we could say Raoul is a
happy penguin we can and we could say
roll is happier than says R we can also
say says R is less happy than Raul so
this is this is comparative but it's
going the other way right this is R is
less happy than Raul so then we use the
less than symbol Gabriela is the
happiest penguin and so for this group
of three says R is the least happy so
you can use the comparative and the
superlative forms of adjectives to
compare relationships where one thing is
more or most than another or others or
relationships where one thing is less or
least than others that's how the
comparative and superlative work but if
you stick around for the next video I'm
going to talk about how to figure out
how to form the comparative and
superlative when you're looking at a
word you've never seen before like what
if we made up a word like like blur fie
what do you do with that well you'll
find out next time in the meantime you
can learn anything Dave it out