Good, Better, The Best: Superlatives

(copyright: National Geographic)

In the previous post, we looked at comparatives, comparing two or more things to each other. Today, we'll look at superlatives, where we compare one thing to many others.

Big, Bigger: Comparatives

Look at the photo above. There are two dogs: a chihuahua and a great dane. Of course, the great dane is a big dog, and the chihuahua is a small dog.

Chihuahuas and great danes are both dogs, but, great danes are bigger than chihuahuas. Chihuahuas are smaller than great danes.


Words like bigger and smaller are called comparatives: words we use to compare two (and sometimes more) things.


Short adjectives like big and small usually have "er" endings in the comparative form. Words like prettythe "y" becomes "i": prettier.

 Longer adjectives like expensive and beautiful, we add "more" or "less".  For example:  an iPhone is more expensive than an Android phone.


Be careful: there are exceptions to the rule about long and short adjectives. Look at the example below:

Math is boring, but history is  boringer.

Math is boring, but history is more boring.

If you want to show a big difference, you can add the word "much" to the comparative. an iPhone is much more expensive than an Android phone.

Because & So: What's The Difference?

a) The baseball game was cancelled because it started  to rain.

b) It started to rain, so the baseball game was cancelled.

The two sentences above don't look very different, but, "because" and "so" have two different functions.

Look at the examples below.

A: Why was the baseball game cancelled? 

B: It was cancelled because it started to rain.

____________________________________________

A: What happened?

B: It started to rain, so the baseball game was cancelled.

For and To: Explaining Yourself

A: Why are you going to Hawaii?

B: I'm going there because I want to see the Aloha Festival.

The word because is very common. We use it to answer "why" questions, to express the reason or purpose of our actions, decisions, and opinions. 

In today's post, we will look at other ways of explaining actions, decisions, and opinions using:

to and for

Phrasal Verbs: Review #1

JLB Language Services' second post was all about phrasal verbs. That was more than two months ago, so let's do a brief review.