Hi there, guys! It's good to see you again!
After watching the video about making a reservation
and going through the interaction guide,
let's learn a little more about some important elements of the language.
Today we'll talk about adjectives!
Their function is to describe or to qualify things,
people, places, animals etc.
Therefore, they refer to nouns, or to pronouns,
which can replace nouns in a sentence.
Let's see some examples?
"Location" is a noun and "great" is an adjective.
Notice that we used to adjective first and then the noun.
Another example:
The adjective is "nice" and the noun, "breakfast".
One more example!
"Comfortable" is the adjective and "room" is the noun.
It's important to remember the position of the adjectives in English:
most of the time we'll use the adjective before the noun.
But besides describing and qualifying,
we can also use adjectives to make comparisons.
You may want to compare two hotels, two rooms, two cities
or whatever else.
And how do we do it? Using adjectives!
In English, we'll have a specific structure for comparisons.
Let's say I want to compare London and New York.
Do you want to know what I think?
I'll tell you!
Notice that I used the structure "as beautiful as"
to express that both cities are equally beautiful.
That is, I'm expressing an idea of equality.
And the base structure for expressing equality is the following:
More examples?
In this case, we use the verb "to be" to say that both rooms are comfortable
and als, they're both the same when it comes to comfort.
Let's take a look at another example:
Here, we are comparing two hotels considering cleanliness,
and saying that both are equally clean.
Alright, guys! So far, we've talked about equality,
but how about when I want to say that one thing is superior
when compared to something else?
Then, we use the comparative of superiority.
And the structure is different.
But first, let's separate the adjectives in two groups!
Let's consider the group of short adjectives first.
They are adjectives with one syllable
or adjectives with two syllables but ending in "y".
For example:
Note that this one ends in "y".
And "busy", which also ends in "y".
For this group of adjectives,
the comparative of superiority works like this:
we add "er" at the end of the adjective,
and in the case of adjective ending in "y",
we drop the "y" and add "ier".
Then we add the word "than".
Let's make this very clear!
The base structure looks like this:
Or, in some cases
followed by the second element to which you're comparing something.
Take a look at this example!
Notice that the adjective "cheap" has only one syllable,
so we added "er" to make the comparative form, "cheaper".
After that, we use "than", so we have: "cheaper than".
Let's look at another example!
Here the adjective is "busy", which has two syllables and ends in "y".
Then, we drop they "y" and add "ier"
and "than" to make the comparative form.
So we get: "busier than".
But, in English, we'll only add "er" or "ier"
to form the comparative form with short adjectives.
The structure is going to be different with the second group of adjectives,
which we'll explore now: the group of long adjectives.
That is, adjectives with two syllables but do not end in "y",
and all the others, with three or more sylables.
In this case, we do not add any syllable. Instead, we use "more" before the adjective,
and keep the word "than" right after it.
Like this:
Take a look at an example with an adjective we've seen recently, "comfortable":
Let's look at an example with the adjective "spacious",
it has two syllables, but it doesn't end in "y".
Then it is part of the long adjectives group. Look!
Again, we use "more" + an adjective, in this case, "spacious" + "than",
to form the comparative of superiority.
So, we'll use the comparative form whenever we want to compare two elements.
And when we are making decisions, comparing is always important, right?
But in your decision-making process,
you'll probably get to a point in which you want to compare one thing
to all the others in the same category.
It can be a hotel, a city, an airline, you name it!
And when you get there, my friends,
you will need the superlative form!
Let's continue with both groups of adjectives,
short and long adjectives,
in order to learn the structure of the superlative form.
We'll be adding a suffix to short adjectives as well,
but now we'll add "est" or "iest", and we won't use "than" anymore.
We use the definitive article "the" before the adjective.
Let's see how it works!
The base structure looks like this:
For example:
Notice that "the cheapest" means that no other hostel in town
costs less than Greenleaf.
And in the sentence we have "in town",
which tells us we're comparing this hostel to all the others in the same city.
One more example!
Here, we used pretty, a short adjective ending in "y".
So, when in the superlative form it's like this: "the prettiest",
the prettiest of all the ones I know!
Now, with long adjectives we use "the most" before the adjective,
and we do not add a suffix.
Look at the structure!
For example:
The adjective "sophisticated" does not change. And we mentioned " in New York",
that is, of all the hotels there, this is the most sophisticated one.
Let's look at another example!
We have "appropriate", a long adjective, so we use "the most",
and we compare it with all other hotels in terms of location.
So, we have seen the structures
of the comparative and superlative of superiority.
But some adjectives do not follow the same pattern,
they have irregular comparative and superlative forms.
But there are only a few cases, and among the most frequent,
we'll highlight three.
Take a look.
"Good", in the comparative form, becomes "better".
In the superlative form, it becomes "the best".
"Bad" becomes "worse".
So, "worse than" in the comparative form.
And in the superlative form we use "the worst".
In English, "far" also has irregular comparative and superlative forms.
So, we'll say "farther than" and "the farthest".
Let's see some examples?
Here we are using the comparative form of "good",
that's why we use "better than".
Another example:
Here we are comparing which one is the farthest,
so we have the adjective "far", so we use "farther than".
Now in the superlative form!
Here we say that the Blue Lake is better than any other hotel in town,
so we used "the best"!
So, we've seen a lot about making adjectives and about making comparisons on this video.
Now, it's time to practice these structures.
Do the follow-up activities and see you next time!
Have a good one!