French Comparatives and Superlatives

French Comparatives

Comparatives in French are divided just like in English into three forms (Superiority, inferiority, and equality), let’s have a look at the three forms before going through each one of them in detail.

Comparisons of superiority can be made usually with adjectives, she is more elegant than Mary = elle est plus élégante que Marie. He is taller than John = il est plus grand que Jean.

Sometimes you can use superiority with adverbs and nouns as well:

He can learn more quickly (faster) than his friend = il peut apprendre plus rapidement que son ami. (adverbs)

She speaks more languages than I do. Elle parle plus de langues que moi (note that when a noun is used we have to add “de” after “plus”) (nouns)

Now let’s go through comparison of inferiority, almost the same, just instead of “plus/ more” we use “moins/ less”. Easy!

She is less elegant than Mary = elle est moins élégante que Marie. He is shorter than John = il est moins grand que Jean.

Sometimes you can use inferiority with adverbs and nouns as well:

He can learn less quickly (slower) than his friend = il peut apprendre moins rapidement que son ami. (adverbs)

She speaks less languages than us. Elle parle moins de langues que nous (note that when a noun is used we have to add “de” after “moins”).

Finally to form equality we use aussi... que (as... as) or autant…que (as much/many as), so you can use them with the examples above (superiority/ inferiority) to form equality. For example: she is as elegant as Mary = elle est aussi élégante que Marie. He is as tall as John = il est aussi grand que Jean.

For nouns and verbs we use autant…que instead. She speaks as many languages as I do. Elle parle autant de langues que moi (note that when a noun is used we have to add “de” after “autant”).

French Superlatives

The superlative is formed by adding the appropriate definite article in front of the comparative: Paris est la plus grande ville de France (Paris is the biggest city of France). 

Superlatives in French are formed with the appropriate definite article + plus/ moins. The appropriate definite article means (le/ la/ les) depending on the gender and number of the noun, for example to say that Paris is the biggest city of France, first we should look at the word “Paris”, it’s a city right! in French a city is feminine and of course singular since we talk only about one city, so the appropriate definite articles would be “la”, now to say “biggest” for a feminine word we would use “plus grande”, note that we added an “e” to “grand/ big” to form the feminine, ok let’s put everything together in a sentence now, Paris is the biggest city of France = Paris est la ville la plus grande de France. Now let’s play the same game using the “less famous” “moins célèbre”: Bimbim is the less famous city in France = Bimbim est la ville la moins célèbre de France.

Now let’s look at some exceptions, in English you say, the book is good, the book is better, the book is the best. You don’t say the book is gooder, the book is the goodest. The same thing happens in French.

Note that these exceptions should agree in gender and number with the noun and adjective..., that’s why you see additional (e) for feminine, and additional (s) for plural.

Il parle bien (he speaks well), il parle mieux que moi (he speaks better than me), il parle le mieux (he speaks the best).