Early Intermediate Spanish Podcast 24 – Making Comparisons in Spanish

Comparisons in Spanish.

The good news is that making comparisons in Spanish is very similar to English.  In fact, it’s almost identical! What is important, however, is understanding what we are doing when we make comparisons in Spanish and English. To do that we should look at the structure of the sentences we use without normally thinking about what we are doing. There are two main families of comparisons. These are:  

Comparatives.

AS-AS We use comparatives when we say things like: “I’m as happy as a dog with three tails.”, or “I’m as sick as a parrot.” You may have noticed that in the above sentences the word AS is repeated. AS big AS,  AS little AS. In between the AS’s is an adjective, like happy, sad, big, small. AS MUCH AS We have another family of comparisons that use AS MUCH AS like this: “I don’t have as  much as you.” or “You have as much as he does.” And then, there are the sentences with AS MANY: “He has as many as I do.” or  I don’t have as many cars as he does.” Notice in the last two sentences that you can use AS MANY AS on its own and you can also insert a NOUN to make the phrase more specific. As many friends as… The next group of comparisons are called:  

Superlatives.

These are what we use when we say things like: ” I like you more than ever.” or ” You mean more to me than a lottery win.” How you can spot them is by noticing the words that always appear in these sentences: MORE THAN/LESS THAN example: “She has more than me.” or “I have less than her.” Of course, like with the Comparatives,  you can add a NOUN to make the phrase more specific: “I have more houses than you do.” or “They have less time than we do.”  

So how does this help me?

Now that you have refreshed your understanding of what we call comparatives and superlatives, you can watch or listen to our podcast and you will be able to understand far more easily what we talk about and the structures of the sentences we make.   Clearly, all our podcasts are backed up by comprehensive helpsheets that take you, step by step, through each part of the grammar and give you tests to check your understanding.   Gordon y Cynthia 🙂

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Audio for This Spanish Lesson