Welcome to
ESL Printables,
the website where English Language teachers exchange resources:
worksheets, lesson plans, activities, etc.
Our collection is growing every day with the help of many teachers. If
you want to download you have to send your own contributions.
Lucky - Luckier // or more lucky? .. Grammar help!
I �m sorry I �m postin this again but I �ve recieved some PMs from members who say they could not post their answer on the post and I �d love to read them! For some strange reason I could only read parts of the PMs...
Let �s see if this works this time. Hello everyone,
I
�ve seen that we are allowed to ask on the forum about grammar doubts,
and I have one now. It �s about comparative adjectives...
Today
we were going through the grammar rules on how to use comparative
adjectives with my adult students and when we got to these ones: wet - lucky - dirty - clever - new - gentle.
I got this doubt: Do we say dirtier? or MORE dirty? ---- What about WET can you say WETTER? Should we applied the rule to wet in that it says: short adj, add ER, if the adj. ends in vowel + cons. dupplicate the consonant...
I was really confused .. I felt during a lapse of seconds as If I had never written nor seen those words...
And
what about CLEVER or GENTLE? These adjectives fit the category of �some
� two syllable adj., which do not take - ER? as an exception to the
rule?
The rule says that : To form the comparative of
one-syllable adjectives and some two-syllable adjectives we add �er:tall � taller, narrow � narrower Also, some short adjectives which end in vowel + consonant should take a double
consonant and when students asked me about the word NEW for instance, I
couldn �t explain WHY don �t those adjectives dupplicate the W..
Goodnesses, she said she can �t read the entire pm and I think it is good if the discussion is out on the main forum anyway, as it may help others with the same question. Don �t you agree? : )
I won �t go into the grammar here (it �s Friday night and my brain is done in), but we say: dirtier, wetter, cleverer, gentler, taller, narrower.
Hi! Two-syllable adjectives ending in -y, -le, -er and -ow take the inflected forms -er and -est like one-syllable adjectives. As regards new, I think it �s because -taking phonetics into account- it �s not a short vowel sound and that �s why you don �t double the final consonant, but I �m not sure now... I �d have to do some research on that!!! I studied it a long time ago...hahaha, anyway, maybe others can say if I �m right or not about that one... Hope it helps. Hugs, Luj�n
I �d like to say thank you to the people who sent me a Pm just now. Shame this couldn �t be shared on the forum because I �d like to answer to everyone and discuss on the topic a bit. But I see some people like Godnessess find it bad to have this sort of posts.
I thought it was great when the other day someone asked about prepositions and many teachers answered and I learnt something else. Which I should know of course, but even though I �ve studied English so many years, sometimes I feel I know nothing!! hehe
I know the rules, the basic ones about comparative and superlatives I was just so confused about the ones which finish with W... (and I guess this is becasue I was not too good with phonetics when studying at University and the profesor I had was so scary, I still don �t know if I got too many Below standards because of fear of the teacher or because I didn �t know..)..hehe
Also I saw the word WETTER so odd! As if I had never seen it before..
I said I �d like to thank you to the people who messaged me. Earlier today I couldn �t read them! If you are so bothered by the post, don �t answer it! or are you some kind of board moderator telling people what they should do, say and write?.
This is weird.
@Ayaniw, thanks.. I do have those kind of charts I was looking for some further linguistic answer not the basic rules.
Ciao...Cheerz!
-thanks Manonski, same answer gave TInt.. Thank you TInt
I think your doubt has to be with two-syllable adjectives:
* those ending in ful or re usually take more and most
doubtful more doubtful most doubtful obscure more obscure most obscure
* Those ending in er, y or ly usually add er, est:
clever cleverer cleverest silly sillier silliest
As regards why wet doubles the last consonant whereas new does not, the rule says one or two syllable words ending in consonant + vowel + consonant should double the last consonant when adding a suffix.
Hope it helps!
ps Do not worry. Your post was correct. It is great to share. None of us knows everything and this is the best way to brush up our English
edited: the rule refers to the sound and not the spelling.
We all know that generally there are rules but we also know that often the rules do not fit and we want to know why - afterall, our students often want to know why and we as teachers want to be able to explain why instead of saying we don �t know.
In your examples dirty and lucky generally follow the rule of ier/iest.
For clever and gentle - you can use either rule; both are acceptable. Cleverest/most clever, gentlest/most gentle. Grammar guru Swan states that the use of most (more) is becoming more common. As such, although we have a traditional rule for for two syllable adjectives in reality the rules are flexible. He recommends checking a good dictionary to see which is the most acceptable.
