6.6 Grammar: Comparative Adjectives, Part III

There are several adjectives that behave more like the first four you saw in the previous module. Just as there are two ways to compare entities in English, there are two in Russian. In English we use either -er or ‘more’ to make our comparisons:

• bigger, better, faster, stronger
• more beautiful, more interesting, more talented, more serious

You may remember that the rule in English for when to use which has to do with the number of syllables the adjective has. In Russian, the rule is not as clear cut. In Russian, SOME adjectives have MUTATED comparative forms and others just add -ее to the adjective stem.

A. You have learned 4 basic comparatives that look almost nothing like the basic adjective:

B. You also just saw that to make a comparative for many adjectives, you simply add -ее to the adjective stem:

C. There are several adjectives, however, that have neither of the above forms and they, like the first 4, must just be memorized. The nice thing, though, is these comparative forms look a lot like the basic adjectives. They have what are called ‘stem mutations’. Yikes! Frankenstein, like adjectives!

You will learn a few of these this unit and they will be part of your active vocabulary.  Exercises on the following pages will have you practice these forms:

Examples of comparative adjectives of the -е type with stem mutations

И да́льше…

These must be memorized. You’ll find that these start to feel pretty natural after a while. For these, the comparative ending is again a single -е. We will learn a few here:

с > ш

высо́кий > вы́ше

Non-mutating, but exceptional comparatives

Finally, there are two other forms to learn. They are exceptional, like хоро́ший > лу́чше and ма́ленький > ме́ньше:

*Both мла́дше and моло́же are valid comparative forms, meaning ‘younger’. The former tends to be used to describe familial relationships.

BUT: