Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to form comparisons of superiority, inferiority, and equality in French.

Lesson Explanation

Comparisons of superiority and inferiority use plus…que (more…than) and moins…que (less…than): Marie est plus grande que Jean. (Marie is taller than Jean.) Ce livre est moins intéressant que celui-là. (This book is less interesting than that one.)

Comparisons of equality use aussi…que (as…as): Marie est aussi grande que Jean. (Marie is as tall as Jean.)

A genuinely important set of irregular comparatives must be memorized, similar in spirit to the irregular sets from the Spanish and Italian courses built earlier: bon (good) → meilleur (better), mauvais (bad) → pire or plus mauvais (worse, both acceptable), bien (well, an adverb) → mieux (better) — a genuinely important distinction from “meilleur,” since “bien/mieux” modify verbs while “bon/meilleur” modify nouns: Elle chante mieux que moi. (She sings better than me — adverb) versus Son gâteau est meilleur que le mien. (Her cake is better than mine — adjective).

Superlatives add the definite article before plus/moins, and must still agree with the noun in gender/number (Part 1, Lesson 5): le plus grand (the tallest, masc.), la plus grande (the tallest, fem.), les plus grands (the tallest, masc. plural).

Practice Questions