It has happened again, and this time it happened rather suddenly – I found something in Russian language that I haven’t given much thought to as of late but which amused me to such an extreme that I could not refrain from sharing it with you all. The other day I was browsing through a thick book on Russian grammar in Norwegian [it is one of those eccentric, unexplainable twists of fate that Norway should be the country to produce the best grammar book of Russian for people with a Scandinavian language as their mother tongue, because they truly have, sometimes I even wonder if it’s not the best book of Russian grammar in the whole world, that’s how good it is, this Russisk grammatikk by Terje Mathiassen. Plus, Norwegian is a hilarious language, just as amusing to read as Ukrainan is to a Russian, I suppose] and it dawned on me that I have never discussed the very intriguing «сравнительная степень прилагательных» [comparative of adjectives] here. How bizarre! How shameful! «Стыдно мне» [I’m ashamed] or even «стыд и срам!» [(for) shame!], as a native of Russian would be sure to put it, after making further aqientence with this my slip-up. Maybe you’re asking yourself, what’s the big deal? What could possibly be so interesting (though I would personally in this case use ‘fascinating’) about dealing a little bit with the comparative of adjectives? Well, if it sometimes gets as complicated as ‘this book is good, but this book is better’ in English, then who knows just how linguistically juicy things could get in an advanced Slavic language?

Then, one asks oneself, how to compare adjectives in Russian? How do you say the sentence above, that one book is good but another one better, in the language of Pushkin and Medvedev? Simply: «Это хорошая книга, но та книга лучше». But wait a minute, what happened to the adjective «хороший» here, why didn’t it also turn into «хорошее» as in the example with «красивый» and «красивее» under the picture above? Welcome to the world of irregularities! Just as in English (good, better) Russian has its irregular peculiarities. Though many Russian adjectives are compared in a regular manner, adding to the end «-ее» there are very many exceptions to this rule. And since exceptions are both harder to grip and more fun to deal with, I thought we should linger on them today.

«Он живёт в высоком доме» – He lives in a tall building.
«Но дом, в котором она живёт, выше» – But the house in which she lives is taller.

«Деревня моей бабушки такая тихая летом» – My grandmother’s village is so quiet during the summer.
«Но, конечно же, там тише зимой» – But of course it’s quieter there in the winter.

«(Мой) муж мне близкий человек» – My husband is very close to me.
«Хотя (моя) мама остаётся мне ближе» – Though my mother remains closer to me.

«Разве купишь такую дорогую футболку?» – Are you realling going to buy such an expensive t-shirt?
«Она хорошего качества, и, как мне кажется, есть футболки, которые дороже, но худшего качества» – It is of good quality, and it seems to me that there are other t-shirts that are more expensive but of worse quality.

«Он у нас редкий гость» – He is a rare guest at our place.
«А его брат ходит к нам в гости ещё реже» – But his brother comes to visit us even rarer (more seldom).

«Она толстая» – She is fat.
«А он толще» – But/And he is fatter.

«Мой сосед богатый – покупает себе новую машину раз в месяц» – My neighbor is rich – he buys a new car once a month.
«Это ещё ничего, мой сосед богаче – он покупает по внедoрoжнику в неделю» – That’s still nothing, my neighbor is richer – he buys one new SUV every week.

«Эти примеры лёгкие» – These examples are easy.
«Можно найти и легче примеры» – It is possible to give also easier examples.

I hope these few examples have given you a general idea of how to compare adjectives in Russian. As is probably understood by anyone even in the least familiar with «великий и могучий» [“great and mighty”] it is rather unimpossible to sum up any rule in just a few examples, but one can always try to give a sneak peak of how things might be.

(P.S. I was just wondering how many of you have read or only heard about the poem by Ivan Turgenev «Русский язык», that the quote above about “great and mighty” is from? Or perhaps it is deserving of a post of its own?)