Studying and fixing the topic of the degree of comparison in English cannot be called either the most difficult or the simplest task. Just existing exceptions sometimes become the cause of an error that needs to be fixed and not repeated in the future. For this, it should be understood first that English (as well as Russian) qualitative adverbs and adjectives can have degrees of comparison. Moreover, if, as a rule, a complex and simple form of formation of degrees of comparison of both adjectives and adverbs takes place in Russian, then degrees of comparison in English have a strict distinction for the formation of degrees of comparison for one- and two-syllable adjectives and adverbs.
So, by type of education, the degrees of comparison in English are divided into:
- Simple / Monosyllables: harsh - harsher - the harshest.
- Polysyllabic: splendid - more splendid - the most splendid.
- Wrong: far - farther / further - farthest / furthest.
In the examples above, no distinction was made between adverbs and adjectives, because in fact, in the part of the grammar, which refers to the degree of comparison, melted, for both parts of the speech of the English language, are identical.
As the simplest rule that can be applied in determining the type of education, the degree of comparison of any English adjective or adverb, you can use the Russian equivalents of the same words. For example, in Russian we say “good” - “better” - “best”. If we discard the superlative indicator , we will see that this adverb of the Russian language has three different words in its three forms: good, better, best (of course, you can also use the composite form - the best - but in this example it is better to use the form from one word). This immediately leads us to think that the same adverb in English will also be wrong (which is true). Any student can independently try to find inconsistencies in the degree of comparison of any pair of Russian and English dialects or adjectives (equivalents).
The second rather simple rule, which is easy to understand and use when necessary, concerns the formation of polysyllabic names of adjectives and adverbs. This rule says: when a word consists of two or more syllables, then its comparative form is indicated by the previous word "more", and excellent - by the expression "the most". Of course, it is impossible to take into account all the nuances of using degrees of comparison and learn how to quickly determine which rule can be used in a particular situation, but for most cases these rules are quite enough.
The third simple but very important rule that must be remembered is that the 3rd degree of comparison of adverbs and adjectives, regardless of the type of degree formation, always carries a certain article. The fact that in English there is no gender category for all parts of speech, and the system of inflections is so primitive in comparison with Russian that there is almost nothing to get confused about greatly affects the fate of students. The exception, perhaps, is the so-called “dumb e” at the end of some words, which affects the vowel in the previous syllable and makes it open in this case.