Hello!
This is video number three about comparisons; this time it's about adjectives with two syllables.
Like for example 'busy' which goes to 'busier' and 'useful' which goes to 'more useful',
but why?
Hope you find it helpful!
We're going to start with a picture of two shops, there's Thompson's on the left and
Smith & Son on the right and Smith is looking not very happy, Thompson is looking happy,
why?
Because Thompson's in busy.
I'll just write here 'Thompson's (the shop Thompson's, apostrophe 's') is busy', you
can see all the people standing in the shop.
Smith however, is not busy.
We can compare the two shops, I'll just get my rubber and rub out that 'y' rather carefully,
ok, that's it.
I'll get my pen again and I'll complete the writing 'busier' - 'Thompson's is busier than
Smith and Son', so that's how we formulate the comparative of some two syllable adjectives
like 'busy' which goes to 'busier' 'busier than' and adjectives ending in 'y', for example
'happy' and so on, adjectives ending in 'le' such as 'simple' and 'gentle' , adjectives
ending in 'ow', there aren't so many of those 'narrow', 'hollow' for example.
The second syllable seems to be a bit weaker, so that might be, to some extent, the reason
why and here's the second half of the story with another picture - this time a mother
with two boys, one is helping and the other one is throwing paper aeroplanes, not being
very helpful at all so I'll write there 'Stanley is helpful', that's the boy on the left, he's
Stanley.
Jeff is the other boy, he's not helpful, so I'll just take the word 'helpful' and move
it over a bit, give myself a bit of room there because I want to write in there 'more', 'Stanley
is more helpful (more helpful) than Jeff'.
So here we've formed the comparative same as the three syllable adjectives; 'helpful'
goes to 'more helpful', there we are.
And the kins of adjective that does this are the ones ending in 'ful' like 'thoughtful'
and the ones ending in 'ed' including even one syllable adjectives like 'tired', anything
that ends in 'ed' is going to go with 'more' or with 'ing' and they seem to have what I
might call 'strong second syllables'.
I hope that's a helpful way of looking at it.
Now let's move on the the next page where I'm going to put fifteen common two syllable
adjectives in a cloud, there's the cloud but before I do that I want to write out the three
categories that I want to put them in.
First one I'll write on the left here 'happier than', adjectives that end in 'er'; the second
one I'll put 'more useful than', the ones that take 'more' and over here there are a
few adjectives which can take either - '-er than' or 'more than' so I'll just out a bracket
there to bracket the two together and here are my adjectives, pop I've opened the file.
If you want to pause the video now and think about where those fifteen adjectives go you
could.
I'm going to put them in their place.
First of all 'happy', I'll move 'happy' over there to that column 'happier than' and the
next one is 'careful', I'll move that to that column 'more careful than' and the next one
is 'simple', sorry, I'll move that over there to that column.
And the next one is 'thoughtful', move that over there next to 'careful', 'more thoughtful
than'.
The next one is advanced, remember the past participle 'advanced', 'more advanced than'
and 'funny' goes over there as it ends in a 'y' and they next one is 'clever', 'clever'
goes over there - I hadn't mentioned the 'er' ones.
And 'cunning' ending in 'ing' goes in 'more cunning than'.
'Complete', I'm not quite sure about 'complete' actually, I'm hesitating, maybe 'complete'
doesn't really belong anywhere.
Well I think it probably belongs there but as you can see, I'm not quite sure.
Right, let's go on next one is 'peaceful', that's easy 'more peaceful than', now 'quiet',
I'll move 'quiet' over there 'quieter than' and then 'pleasant' is really, can go either
way 'pleasanter' or 'more pleasant' and 'pretty' goes over there to the left and the last two
both go on the right.
So we've got three definitley on the right, we've got 'pleasant', 'common' and 'polite';
you can say 'more common' or 'commoner', 'more polite' or 'politer', 'more pleasant' or 'pleasanter'.
Now there are two adjectives on the first column on the left that people have different
opinions about, I'll just mark them 'clever' and 'quiet' because some people seem to think,
I'll put a question mark there because I'm not sure that they really belong over here
because you can say 'more clever' or 'cleverer' or you could say 'more quiet' or 'quieter'
and may that's true.
Everything I've said about these adjectives would also apply to the superlatives so I'll
just write here 'the happiest' and the 'most useful', so all those words in those three
columns would also go the same way with 'est' or with 'most'.
Ok, that's all for today, bye for now!