Adjectives:Komparativ und Superlativ

Expressing similarities and differences

Similarities

When comparing two or more people, things, places, etc., you can express that they are the same by using the expressions so ... wie ..., genauso ... wie..., or nicht so ... wie ... and the basic forms of adjectives.

Differences between two entities

When comparing two people, things, places, etc., you can say that one is bigger ..., smaller ..., more ..., less ... than the other with the comparative forms of the adjectives (for regular adjectives the ending is -er) and expressions such as als ... or immer ...

Differences among three or more entities

When comparing more than two people, things, places, etc., you can express that something is the best, the hippest, the bee's knees by using the superlative forms of adjectives (for regular adjectives, the ending is -est) and expressions such as in der ganzen Welt (in the whole world) or unter allen anderen ... (among all others)

Regular adjectives

Regular comparative and superlative adjectives merely put an -er and an -est ending on the basic adjective, even if they are very long (in contrast to English, which uses 'more' or 'most' if the adjective is more than two syllables long, such as diligent or intelligent). In the column 'superlative' the first version (e.g., 'die böste') is the attributive adjective, while the second version (e.g., 'am bösesten) is the predicate adjective. Remember: 'the most evil queen' is an attributive adjective and 'this queen was the most evil' is a predicate adjective.

Irregular adjectives

Irregular comparative and superlative adjectives put an -er and an -est ending on the basic adjective, in addition to changes to the word stem. For example, syllables that are one syllable long and have -a-, -o-, -u-.

Adjectives that end in -el, -en or -er drop the -e- before the comparative endings (but keep it in the superlative form!):

Adjectives that end in -s, -ß, -z, -d, -t or a vowel ... add an -e before the superlative -st suffix or drop the -s from the -st (adding the Umlaut in the one-syllable -a, -o, -u adjectives):

And of course, some adjectives are utterly irregular! You simply need to memorize these:

Adjective endings

Attributive adjectives

Attributive adjectives (in contrast with predicate adjectives) are placed before the noun and take endings in both the basic and comparative/superlative forms depending on the gender, number and case of the noun they describe.

Comparative or superlative adjectives that precede nouns take the same adjective endings as basic (i.e., non-comparative/superlative) attributive adjectives, in addition to the comparative and superlative endings. They can be preceded by der-words, by ein-words or by other determiners.

Predicate adjectives: comparative

Comparative adjectives that follow nouns (separated by a verb such as sein, werden, heißen) take only the comparative endings, but no other adjective endings.

Predicate adjectives: superlative

Superlative adjectives that follow nouns take another kind of superlative ending -sten and are preceded by am.