<B>The British Council?s language clinic with ?Dr Danny?</B>

Hello and welcome to the English Language Clinic. This week I have received a request to explain what ?comparatives? and ?superlatives? are. The ?comparative? form of an adjective is used to compare two things. For example, I am looking at two people, Sev and Nuria. Sev is ?tall? and Nuria is ?short?. Therefore, I can choose to compare them to one another in two basic ways; either I can say that Sev is ?taller than? Nuria, or that Nuria is ?shorter than? Sev.

The ?superlative? form is used to compare three or more things and describe the fact or opinion that one of them is different at either end of a scale (positive or negative). For example, if a third person, John (who is very tall) joined Sev and Nuria, I could describe the difference between their heights, using one of two ?superlatives?. Either I could describe the fact that John is ?the tallest? or that Nuria is ?the shortest?.

A good rule to remember, although there are exceptions, (therefore it is a ?heuristic? or ?rule of thumb?), is that if the adjective has one or two syllables, add ?-er? to the end to form the comparative and ?-est? to form the superlative. If the adjective has more than two syllables, the word ?most? precedes (goes in front of) positive superlatives (the most intelligent), ?least? negative ones (the least intelligent) and the word ?more? precedes positive comparatives (more intelligent than) and ?less? negative ones (less intelligent than).

It is incorrect to mix these two rules, for example, do not say or write, ?ostriches are more faster than cats or dogs.? Similarly, avoid ?dogs are the most intelligentest.? There is a third type of adjective, called irregular adjectives; I will be talking about irregular adjectives next week.

Please send your comments, queries and questions to ?Dr Danny? by emailing the following address [email protected]