Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to form comparatives and superlatives in Russian, including the genuinely common short-form comparative.

Lesson Explanation

The simplest and most common Russian comparative adds -ее or -ей (informal) to the adjective stem — genuinely simpler than the gender/number-agreeing comparatives seen in Spanish, Italian, or French, since this short-form comparative doesn’t change for gender or number at all: новый → новее (newer), used identically regardless of the noun’s gender.

Comparisons use чем (than): Этот дом новее, чем тот. (This house is newer than that one.) A genuinely common alternative to “чем” simply uses the noun in the genitive case (Part 3, Lesson 1) with no “than” word at all: Этот дом новее того. (literally “newer of-that,” genuinely parallel in spirit to Russian’s articleless, caseflected efficiency seen throughout this course.)

A genuinely important set of irregular comparatives must be memorized: хороший → лучше (good → better), плохой → хуже (bad → worse), большой → больше (big → bigger), маленький → меньше (small → smaller).

The simplest superlative uses самый (most) plus the adjective, and — genuinely unlike the comparative — DOES agree in gender, number, and case like a normal adjective (Part 1, Lesson 6): самый новый (the newest, masc.), самая новая (the newest, fem.). Самый can combine directly with the irregular comparatives too: самый лучший (the very best, genuinely emphatic, combining two “better/best” concepts.)

Practice Questions