Adjectives and how to compare them

Lingo is short and curious. They have turquoise skin and red eyes. Maria is taller than Lingo. She is nice. She’s got brown skin and black hair.

The picture is painted. It is blue. Beautiful. All these words describe Lingo, Maria and the picture. When describing someone or something, we might say what they look like, ...

what characteristics they have ... or where they’re from ...like Japanese, Samoan, Kenyan. These descriptive words belong to a group of words – a part of speech. They are adjectives. Adjectives describe people, things, animals and events – that is, nouns, or words that replace nouns – pronouns.

Sometimes an adjective describes what someone thinks about something, an opinion: “The picture is beautiful.” Or it might be a description that is always true, a factual description: “The picture is painted.” Adjectives often end in similar ways. They usually have one of these endings: -able lovable -ful beautiful -ish childish -less priceless -like childlike -ous anonymous -y happy Adjectives can also be created from verbs. For example the verb: to frighten Two adjectives come from this verb: frightened which means that someone is experiencing fear, is afraid. The other adjective is frightening which means that something is causing fear – scaring others. These two words are in two special forms of this verb – participles.

Many English adjectives come from participles. They all end with -ing … -ed Sometimes we compare things using adjectives. We can say that someone is more young, younger, than someone else. Or youngest. To do this is called ‘to compare’ an adjective.

Shorter adjectives, those with one syllable, are compared by changing the ending of the word, like this: young, younger, youngest big, bigger biggest These two other forms of an adjective are called: comparative, and superlative. Longer adjectives, with three or more syllables, don’t have special forms, but are compared by adding more or most For example you can’t say *beautifuller or *interestingest Instead you say: more beautiful, most interesting Adjectives with two syllables can be compared in both ways: commoner/more common narrowest/most narrow ... There are also adjectives that do not follow these rules. These are very common adjectives that you learn early on, and use a lot. Good, better, best Bad, worse, worst They have irregular comparison.

Here, not just the ending is changed, but the whole word is replaced in the comparative and superlative forms. … All adjectives that we have looked at so far can be compared. You can be more or less young, big, beautiful, interesting... These adjectives are gradable But there are also adjectives that you normally can not compare. These are for example words like dead dead or pregnant pregnant You can’t be more or less of those: if you’re dead, you’re dead. You can’t be ‘deader’ or ‘pregnantest’. *deader, *pregnantest These adjectives are Non-gradable ...

So adjectives are words that we use to describe how people and things look, and their properties. Most can be compared, but not all. One of the adjectives at the beginning of the film was in fact compared – can you find it? ... Exactly. Maria is taller than Lingo.