Lesson 3.3 · Words that go with nouns
Comparative and superlative
Big, bigger, biggest — degree marked on the ending like everything else.
To say -er or -est, add one marker between the stem and the gender vowel. There are two, and they are the same two for every describing word in the language:
| Stem | Plain | –er | –est |
|---|---|---|---|
meg- great | megos | megoteros | megotatos |
agath- good | agathos | agathoteros | agathotatos |
sof- wise | sofos | sofoteros | sofotatos |
The result is still a describing word, so it still ends with the
gender and job of whatever it describes:
ton megoteron logon, "the greater word", on the
receiving end.
Comparative and superlative
One marker between the stem and the gender vowel — the same two for every adjective, with no irregular forms and no vowel changes. Greek words that are already comparative (μείζων, πλείων) are built from the plain adjective here; the handful whose comparative became a word of its own (πρῶτος “first”, πρεσβύτερος “elder”) keep no marker.
| stem | plain | comparative · -oter- | superlative · -otat- |
|---|---|---|---|
| meg- (great) | megos | megoteros | megotatos |
| agath- (good) | agathos | agathoteros | agathotatos |
| sof- (wise) | sofos | sofoteros | sofotatos |
agathos is
agathoteros, every time, with no separate word to
learn.In the Greek — where these two markers come from
They are Greek's own: -ότερος and -ότατος (σοφώτερος "wiser", ἁγιώτατος "holiest"). Greek also has a second pattern in -ίων / -ιστος and a set of suppletive forms — μέγας/μείζων/μέγιστος, ἀγαθός/κρείσσων, πολύς/πλείων — which is where the memorising comes in. Biblang builds all of them from the plain word.
A handful of Greek comparatives long ago became words in their own right — πρῶτος "first", πρεσβύτερος "elder" — and those are kept as ordinary words here, with no marker.