Adjectives and how to compare them (SVFL)

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.” Sometimes we compare things using adjectives. We can say that something is more fine, finer, than something else. Or finest. This is called comparing an adjective. There are three forms of adjective comparison.

These are called positive, comparative, and superlative. Most Swedish adjectives are compared by changing the ending of the word. This is called inflection. Like this: fin finare finast bred bredare bredast These adjectives belong to a group of adjectives called the first inflection group, the first declension. In this group, only the ending is changed. -are; -ast There is also a second declension, that is inflected a bit differently.

Ung, yngre, yngst Stor, större, störst In the second declension you add the endings: -re and -st but the vowel changes too. This change in sound is called umlaut. A few adjectives in the second declension can even get a completely different form. Like this: dålig, värre, värst gammal, äldre, äldst Here, it’s not just the ending that’s changed, but the whole word in the comparative and superlative forms. ... Some adjectives do not inflect at all when compared.

Instead you add a word: mer or mest For example you can’t say *spännandare or *typiskast Instead you say: mer spännande, mest typisk These are the ones ending with -ad, -ande, -ende and, most often, -isk like korkad, spännande, leende, typisk Some adjectives can be compared in both ways. Either with inflection or with mer, mest … For example: roligare mer rolig aktivast mest aktiv All adjectives that we have looked at so far can be compared. You can be more or less young, big, old, or exciting... These adjectives are gradable But there are also adjectives that you normally can not compare. These are for example words like dead död or pregnant gravid You can’t be more or less of those: if you’re dead, you’re dead.

You can’t be ‘deader’ or ‘pregnantest’. *dödare, *gravidast 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.