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Course: Grammar > Unit 4
Lesson 4: Comparative, superlative, intensifiers, and adverbs of degreeIntro to the comparative and the superlative
Comparatives and superlatives are features of English that allow us to compare one thing to another. To make the comparative, say "more happy" or "happier". To make the superlative, say "the most happy" or "happiest".
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- if this is grammer why is david teaching us made up words like blarfy and dosa scomp. lol(37 votes)
- You remembered them, didn't you? ;)
That's why.(184 votes)
- nah Cesar looks so confused 😭(16 votes)
- why do we put "--er" or "--est" when "most" or "more" already shows comparison?
why don't we put "--er" or "--est" when we use "less" or "least"?(7 votes)- Try saying them super fast: "more-est" almost sounds like "most" and "less-est" kind of sounds like "least"
So - a long time ago - the "-est" was added to show comparison, but the sound just blended in with the rest of the word. And over time, the spelling of the word was adjusted to reflect how it sounded.
Hope this helps!(17 votes)
- With the colors, the penguins look radioactive!(15 votes)
- how can Cesar be so unhappy with that cool name?(12 votes)
- I love how Cesar is depressed, Raul looks like he's about to spontaneously combust, and Gabriela is going insane.(12 votes)
- so pretty much superlative means that something is the most or least of something while comparitive talks about a comparison(7 votes)
- Why we can't say less happier instead of less happy(5 votes)
- WHY would you use it?! When you say "less", you are already using a comparative degree. So, I guess you won't like to waste your time, energy or your ink by uselessly adding a second comparative by making it happier instead of happy. You know, every moment of your life is precious. Don't waste it on adding two comparatives when you can work perfectly well with only one. Just use less happy or simply sadder.
Hope it helped :)(10 votes)
- raul looks hyper and traumatized, cesar looks confused and kinda depressed, and gabriella looks like she's freaking out. Are the three okay? Is there a polar bear somewhere?(9 votes)
- Without the subtitles its very difficult to understand the definitions that David is telling us.
Do you guys conduct online classes cause I want to study with David 1 to 1??(6 votes)- 1) So, turn on the closed captions.
2) Khan Academy does not conduct one on one classes, even if you pay for them. This is free. Enjoy it that way.(5 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] SO we've got these
three penguins, grammarians we've got Raúl, who
you may remember from his sweet mohawk, we've got
Cesar and we've got Gabriela. Three magellanic penguins from Argentina. And they are all different
amounts of happy. Cesar is a medium amount of
happy, Raúl is more happy, and Gabriela is the most happy. And in English, we have
a way to compare these. To compare Raúl to Cesar. To compare Raúl to Gabriela,
or any combination thereof. We call these comparative
and superlative adjectives. And before I get too into
the weeds on that, let me just show you what that looks like. So we can say Raúl, let
me put in the accent, Raúl is a happy penguin. He's go all the fish
he wants, life is good. Raúl is happier than Cesar. This is what we call a comparative,
because we're comparing Raúl to Cesar, and we're
comparing their happiness levels. And Raúl has more happiness
in him than Cesar does. Poor Cesar. However, Gabriela is the happiest penguin. Ta-da. The happiest is something that we call superlative in English. So it's not just a comparison. It's not Raúl is happier than Cesar. Gabriela is happier than
all the other penguins. She is the happy-est, she is the happiest, she is the most happy. So one way to think about
this is that Raúls happiness is slightly larger than Cesars happiness, but Gabriela's happiness is double plus, is unbeatably more than both of them. I'm gonna use a made up math symbol. Boom boom boom, like super greater than 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 that you can use the comparative
and superlative for both positive relationships and
also negative relationships. So we could say Raúl is a
happy penguin, and we can say Raúl is happier than Cesar. We can also say Cesar
is less happy than Raúl. So this is comparative but
it's going the other way. Right. Cesar is less happy than Raúl. So then we use the less than symbol. Gabriela is the happiest
penguin, and so for this group of three, Cesar 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 gonna 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 blarfy. What do you do with that? Well, you'll find out next time. In the meantime, you can learn anything. David out.