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

hanck remarrying so last time we talked
about Raoul the penguin and how he was
happier than another penguin Cesare but
I want to talk today about how to form
the comparative and the superlative you
know how to come how to compare how to
say something is more than or most in an
unfamiliar situation if you're looking
at a word for the first time or you're
encountering you're trying to figure out
how to make a word comparative or
superlative you know to be like oh well
I've got this word I've got this word
cute like that's a cute little baby
penguin but how do I say that it is more
cute than another animal well there's a
there's a shorthand for that sometimes
you can say more cute certainly but you
could also say cuter and you could
furthermore say q-test
and it turns out that there are a series
of sound rules in English that kind of
govern the way that we choose to make
these words go so I'll show you I'll
show you each of them in turn so okay so
we've gone so I've got this little table
that I'm building here and we've got a
description how it looks in the
comparative and how it looks and the
superlative so if you take a word like
cute then word so if you take a word
like cute words like cute have what we
call one syllable one word sound cute
and so we're like cute that is one
syllable and ends in an e so one
syllable ends in E all we have to do to
make it comparative is add an R so add R
and that gives us cuter for the
comparative all you have to do is add st
and you get the word q'
test but what if you've got a word like
big if you tried to add just R to that
it would just look like bigger or st to
that it would look like biggest and that
that's not really how we would form
these words in standard English that
doesn't go because they're kind of
inconvenient to say we like to have
vowels in between some of those those
consonant sounds between the book and
the gut and lists so what you do if it's
a one syllable and it's only got one
vowel in the middle like I like that one
vowel and it ends in a consonant like a
like a G then what you do is double the
consonant and add ER so this word big
ends in a G so what I'm going to do is
I'm going to for the comparative I'm
going to say big and then I'm going to
double that G I'm going to use it twice
bigger like that and then add the ER
likewise for the superlative same thing
so you double the consonant at the end
of the word and then you add est so it
becomes bi G and then I double this
consonant sound so bi GG est biggest and
for words like short and sweet oh I
should clarify for for this one for big
this should end in one consonant so bi G
there's only one consonant there because
for words like short and sweet that have
one syllable but either have two vowels
like sweet does so it's e and E or two
consonants at the end what you do is you
just add ER so shorter or sweeter and
for the superlative form add est
so shortest or sweetest and now we're
getting into the weird stuff so if you
take a word like SHINee which is two
syllables and it ends in Y then what you
have to do is you change Y to an i and
you add er so shiny becomes shinier see
how this Y becomes an I here same thing
for superlative the Y becomes an i and
then you add est so shiny esthe now if
you've got a word like magnificent
magnificent this is a four syllable word
it means like super huge super great
super wonderful you've got a word like
that you take a word like that it's a
little bit too big to be adding more
parts to the way that standard American
English works so you wouldn't say
Magnificent ER or magnificent test it
just sounds unwieldy because the words
already pretty long so if you've got a
two or more syllable word that doesn't
end that doesn't end in in Y then you
just have to add the word more to the
beginning so more magnificent and most
magnificent so let's say that you're
encountering a word you've never seen
before
and in a in a sentence you have to
compare the let's say the word is bull
our fee I don't know what it means it
probably something gross so if we want
to compare two really gross meals you
know like a steaming pile of I don't
know dog food covered in flies
or a you know a plate of ancient cheese
it's like 3,000 years old you gotta eat
it grows which one is grosser but you
have to use you've described them using
the word bull our fee this word we've
never seen before but what do we know
about our fee well it's got two
syllables blarf e so that automatically
crosses out any of this stuff it does
end in a Y blur fee so we know that it's
probably going to behave like shiny like
the word shiny because I've got two
syllables and it ends in Y so I'm going
to say that the dog food is less blur
fee and the cheese is blur fear in fact
this cheese is the blur feeis food on
the planet now don't get me wrong I love
a good stinky cheese but this one in
particular there's three
thousand-year-old cheese super blur fee
in fact I'm just going to go so far as
to say it is the blur feast you can
blarf anything David out