Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to form comparisons of superiority, inferiority, and equality in Spanish, including the irregular comparative forms.

Lesson Explanation

Comparisons of superiority and inferiority use más…que (more…than) and menos…que (less…than): Ana es más alta que Juan. (Ana is taller than Juan.)

Comparisons of equality use tan…como with adjectives, and tanto/tanta/tantos/tantas…como with nouns — the latter requiring gender/number agreement with the noun, unlike tan: Ana es tan alta como Juan. (Ana is as tall as Juan.) Tengo tantos libros como tú. (I have as many books as you.)

A genuinely important set of irregular comparatives must be memorized rather than built with más: bueno → mejor (good → better), malo → peor (bad → worse), grande → mayor (older/bigger), pequeño → menor (younger/smaller).

Superlatives add the definite article before más/menos, agreeing with the noun: el más alto (the tallest), la menos interesante (the least interesting).

A genuinely distinctive construction with no direct English equivalent: the absolute superlative, formed by adding -ísimo/a/os/as to an adjective (dropping a final vowel first if present), expresses “extremely” without comparing to anything else: Es facilísimo. (It’s extremely easy — not “the easiest,” just intensely easy, with no comparison implied at all.) This is genuinely different from a regular superlative, which always implies comparison within a group; the absolute superlative stands alone.

Practice Questions