Studying and reinforcing the theme of the degree of comparison in English is neither the most difficult nor the easiest task. It's just that existing exceptions sometimes cause a bug that needs to be fixed and not repeated in the future. To do this, you should first understand that English (as well as Russian) qualitative adverbs and adjectives can have degrees of comparison. Moreover, if in Russian there is, as a rule, both a complex and simple form of the formation of degrees of comparison and adjectives, and adverbs, then the degrees of comparison in English have a strict distinction for the formation of degrees of comparison for one- and two-syllable adjectives and adverbs.
Thus, according to the type of education, degrees of comparison in English are divided into:
- Simple/monosyllabic: harsh – harsher – the harshest.
- Polysyllabic: splendid – more splendid – the most splendid.
- Incorrect: far - farther/further - farthest/furthest.
In the examples above, no distinction was made between adverbs and adjectives, because in fact, in the part of grammar,which refers to the degree of comparison, melted, for both parts of speech of the English language, are identical.
As the simplest rule that can be used when determining the type of formation of 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 degree, then we will see that this adverb of the Russian language has three different words in its three forms: good, better, best (you can, of course, use the compound form - the best - but in this example it is better to use the form from one word). This immediately pushes us to the idea that the same adverb in English will also be incorrect (which is true). Any student can independently try to find inconsistencies in the degree of comparison of any pair of Russian and English adverbs or adjectives (equivalents).
The second fairly 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 preceding word “more”, and the superlative form by the expression “the most”. Of course, it is impossible to take into account all the nuances of using degrees of comparison and learn to quickly determine which rule can be used in a particular situation, but for most casesthese rules are enough.
The third simple but very important rule to remember is that the 3rd degree of comparison of adverbs and adjectives, regardless of the type of degree formation, always has a definite article. It greatly facilitates the fate of students by the fact that in English there is completely no category of gender 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. The exception, perhaps, is the so-called "silent e" at the end of some words, which affects the vowel in the previous syllable and makes it open in this case.
