Comparing: more-awesome-than, less-awesome-than, just-as-awesome-as!

One of the things people love to do with language is to talk. And when we talk, we share our opinions. And, it turns out, one of the ways we express our opinions is by making comparisons between things.

Today we look at how to make such comparisons in French. This post looks at making comparisons using adjectives. Think sentences such as 'reading this blog is more productive than surfing you-tube' and 'finger painting is just as much fun as using a paint brush.' 

There are three very important and useful words to learn in order to make such comparisons. They are:

Plus- 'more' +

Moins- 'less' -

Aussi- 'Just-as-(insert adjective)-as' =

Now, how do we use these words to build comparative sentences? The easiest way is to look at the following sentence skeleton and the example below it: 

noun + être + comparative adjective + adjective + que + comparison

 Ma voiture  est  plus  rapide  que  la votre 

So, if we take a simple sentence such as 'Ma voiture est rapide' we can turn it into a comparison by adding two new elements: a comparison agent eg. 'plus...que' and the comparison itself 'la votre'.

Most of the time when building this sort of sentence, the comparative adjective will be followed by the main adjective and after that will come que. I find it useful to think of que as the equivalent of the English word 'than', as it works to indicate comparison in the same way: my car is faster than yours, ma voiture est plus rapide que la votre. 

Now we can replace plus with moins to reverse the entire meaning of the sentence and show that my car is less fast than yours:

Ma voiture est moins rapide que la votre.

Or we can use aussi to indicate that my car is just-as-fast-as yours

Ma voiture est aussi rapide que la votre.

Now you have built up your comparative skill set, go out and compare share your french abilities with your friends!