My Slavic Studies

Лучше беднее, да честнее.
Better poor with honor than rich with shame. (saying)
Злые языки страшнее пистолета.
Words can kill before arms. (saying)
Лучше поздно, чем никогда.
Better late than never. (saying)

We make comparisons between things every day. Men are stronger than women (hope you don’t find this sexist), fruits and vegetables are healthier than junk food, better late than never, etc. Those sentences all contain comparisons.

In Russian there are two ways to form the comparative form: a short form and a long form. The former of the two is used far more because it’s shorter and a little easier. We’ll look at the short form first.

Forming the short form is easy-peasy. Just remove the adjective’s ending, giving you the stem, then to it we add the ending –ее. That’s all there is to it!

replace adjectival ending with –ее

красивый (красив-) интересный (интересн-) типичный (трудн-)

красивее – интереснее – типичннее –

Below you’ll see a table. In the left column, a basic sentence; in the right, a comparative sentence. I did this to show a contrast of grammar structures.

Basic Sentence	Comparative Sentence
Этот день обычный. This day is ordinary.	Этот день обычнее. This day is more ordinary.
Погода там холодная. The weather there is cold.	Погода там холоднее. The weather there is colder.
Твоё окно круглое. Your window is round.	Твоё окно круглее. Your window is rounder.
Танины торты вкусные. Tanya’s cakes are tasty.	Танины торты вкуснее. Tanya’s cakes are tastier.

Now you can construct some comparisons. Have a look:

Погода там холодная, а погода здесь холоднее.
The weather there is cold, while the weather here is colder.
Её день обычный, а мой день обычнее.
Her day is ordinary, while my day is more ordinary.
Эти торты вкусные, а те торты вкуснее.
These cakes are tasty, while those cakes are tastier.

See how easy this is? You’ll get the hang of it in no time.

But before we move on, there are some things to make note of:

…Although this form is preferred, its usage is rather limited. It is mainly used in the nominative case [Today it’s clearer] and can only be used when an adjective follows a noun [Evgeniy is smarter].

…For adjectives whose stem is longer than one syllable, the stress remains the same in most cases. For one-syllable stems, however, the stress shifts to the comparative ending.

one-syllable stems

трудный (труд-) сильный (сильн-) скучные (скучн-)

труднее – сильнее – скучнее –

All clear? Should be. If not, let’s look at some more examples.

Олег загорелее, чем обычно.
Oleg is more tanned than usual.
Людмила красивее, чем раньше.
Lyudmila is prettier than before.
Завтра будет яснее, чем сегодня.
Tomorrow it will be clearer than today.

Did you notice the word чем? Yes, it means than, when used in comparative sentences. It’s an extremely useful word.

Этот дом странее, чем тот.
This house is stranger than that one.
Моя жена красивее, чем твоя.
My wife is prettier than yours.
Та рубашка яркее, чем эта.
That shirt is brighter than this one.

The word чем is always followed by the nominative case. In colloquial speech, however, it’s very common not to use чем at all and to replace it with the genitive case. Thus, we can say:

Этот дом странее того.
This house is stranger than that one.
Моя жена красивее твоей.
My wife is prettier than yours.
Та рубашка яркее этой.
That shirt is brighter than this one.

But be aware! This shortcut to expressing a comparison cannot be used with the following:

…with adverbs and prepositions (they don’t decline)

Он работает быстрее со мной, чем с тобой. He works faster with me than with you. (Here the usage of the genitive would also be impossible, because prepositions don’t decline in Russian.)

…with clauses

Этот экзамен труднее, чем я думал. This exam is harder than I thought. (Here, even though я can decline, it cannot happen here, because the second part is a clause; меня думал would make no sense.

So, out key takeaway here is that if you use чем, you’ll never be wrong!

And there is more to this topic, but we’ll save that for another post. I wanted to do a whole blog post, but since this one is already quite loaded with information, let’s break it up into two or three posts.