Learn how to make basic comparisons
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| ¡Hola! Soy Brenda Romaniello, tu profesora de español. |
| Hello and welcome to your Spanish Class! My name is Brenda Romaniello. |
| And today, we’re going to learn how to do comparisons in Spanish, specifically, describing where you are from. |
| So, we are going to start with the pattern, the structure that we’re going to use for comparisons in Spanish. One thing that we need to pay attention to is that we’re gonna have some adjectives, yes, but it’s very important to note that in Spanish, we don’t have different comparison degrees in the adjectives. In Spanish, we’re going to use es más “is more” and then the adjective, yes. So, we’ll have a look at some examples to show you exactly what this means. |
| So let’s go over the pattern on how to do comparisons in Spanish. |
| We’re going to have, for example, when we’re describing where you are from or if we are describing people, cities, etc, let’s say that, as we are going to compare today some places, let’s say that we are describing a city or a place. We’re going to have the [PLACE] that we want to compare. Es más, so literally this means “is more.” Then we’re going to have an adjective, which is going to describe this place, being more as something specific, yes. So, this will be the description, what we are describing. That’s what an adjective does. And then que, we’re going to have que. In this case, que means “than,” then the other [PLACE] that we are comparing, okay? |
| So, we’re gonna have: |
| [PLACE] es más [ADJECTIVE] que [the other PLACE]. |
| All right, so this will be, in English we would say: |
| [PLACE] is [ the COMPARATIVE ADJECTIVE] than [the other PLACE]. |
| Let’s have a look at some examples where we can see this pattern, this structure. Let’s compare here two different cities in Mexico. We have Puebla, Puebla, and Tijuana, okay? And in the second example, we have Veracruz and Guanajuato, Guanajuato. |
| Vamos a ver, let’s compare first, Puebla with Tijuana. |
| We can say that: |
| Puebla es más poblada que Tijuana. |
| Puebla es más poblada que Tijuana. |
| Poblada significa “crowded,” so this is the adjective that we’re using in this particular comparison and it means “crowded,” poblada, poblada. |
| Okay, so… |
| Puebla es más poblada que Tijuana means, significa “Puebla is more crowded than Tijuana.” |
| I want you to pay attention to this very important thing. As you can see here es más significa “is more.” So in this case, the comparative adjective in English is just very similar to the Spanish way, yes, because “crowded” in this case doesn’t have a comparative adjective form. |
| But let’s have a look at the following example: |
| Veracruz es más grande… |
| …más grande que Guanajuato. |
| …es más grande que Guanajuato |
| Okay, en este caso “in this case,” we’re saying: |
| Veracruz is bigger than Guanajuato. |
| Can you see here, más grande means “more big,” literally, right? But in English, we’re going to say “bigger,” and this is what I mean when I say a comparative adjective “bigger.” In English, we don’t need to say “more,” but in Spanish, we always say “more [adjective] than,” okay? Perfecto! |
| So those are a few examples of this structure that we are going to use to compare, yes, to compare, to make basic comparisons describing where you’re from, so describing places in this instance. Okay. |
| Now, let’s go over a dialogue. Let’s say that we have two friends talking about where they’re from or the cities where they’re from. |
| Por ejemplo: |
| ¿Querétaro es pequeña? |
| ¿Querétaro es pequeña? |
| Pues, Querétaro es más pequeña que la Ciudad de México. |
| Pues, Querétaro es más pequeña que la Ciudad de México. |
| As you can see here, pequeña significa “small,” yes, es Querétaro small, pequeña. |
| And we say… |
| Pues, Querétaro es más pequeña que la Ciudad de México. |
| Yes…”Well, Querétaro is smaller than Mexico City.” |
| Aquí estamos usando la comparación. So here, we’re using the pattern, the structure for comparisons and we’re comparing Querétaro to Mexico City. |
| Something important to point out here is that two things I want to point out about what we have in this dialogue. Number one is that, as you can see, we’re using pequeña. We’ll have a look at this adjective in a minute, but it’s in the feminino form, and that is because, in Spanish, la ciudad or ciudades, yes, so the city or cities are going to be femenino in Spanish. They’re going to be feminine, okay? So we need to pull it in the femino form, these adjectives, all right? |
| The second thing that I want to point is how do you say “Mexico City” in Spanish? Have you noticed? We say la Ciudad de México, la Ciudad de México. And this is very important, we have an article here, yes, a definite article la…Ciudad de México and in English, we say “Mexico City.” So, it would be like saying- literally, the translation would be “the city of Mexico,” yes, the city of Mexico.” That’s exactly what that means. And most cities don’t have an article, yes. We don’t use a definite article before cities, like look at Querétaro doesn’t have an article, Veracruz like we had here doesn’t, Puebla doesn’t have it, Tijuana, Guanajuato, we don’t use a definite article before the cities, but we do for Mexico City in Spanish. So, Mexico City, we say la Ciudad de México. Perfecto! |
| Now, let’s move on to some vocabulary. So remember, for comparisons in Spanish, we’re going to use and we’re going to compare, in this case, places or cities, using some adjectives. So let’s have a look at some adjectives that we can use to describe places or cities in Spanish. |
| We have frío, frío. Frío would be the masculino form, yes, so this will be the masculino form if we’re describing something masculine, yes, frío. And fría will be the feminino form. Frío - fría, frío - fría, muy bien. That means “cold.” |
| The next one is lluvioso, lluvioso, “rainy,” right? Lluvioso. |
| Lluvioso is masculino. If we are describing a city like in this case, we have to say lluviosa, lluviosa, “rainy.” |
| Let’s see. How do say “old” or “ancient” in Spanish? Yes. Old, ancient for a city. |
| Antiguo, antiguo. That’s the masculino form, antiguo. |
| And the feminino form is antigua, antigua. |
| The next one, poblado. Yes, we had a look at this one when we were doing the first example. |
| Poblado is the masculino form and it means “crowded,” poblado, poblado. |
| Poblada, poblada. Muy bien! |
| And the last two that we have in the list for today is pequeño, pequeño. So, pequeño is going to be the masculino form and pequeña, pequeña is the feminino form and that means “small,” like we were doing it and we were saying- were using it with the example in the dialogue - ¿Querétaro es pequeña? |
| And the last one is grande, grande. Grande means “big” and we use it for both. So this adjective is neutral. We use it form masculino and feminino descriptions. So, in this case, it’s always grande, grande. |
| All right, let’s repeat then! Repeat after me, the vocabulary, so that we practice pronunciation. |
| frío, frío |
| fría, fría |
| lluvioso, lluvioso |
| lluviosa, lluviosa |
| antiguo, antiguo |
| antigua, antigua |
| poblado, poblado |
| poblada, poblada |
| pequeño, pequeño |
| pequeña, pequeña |
| grande, grande |
| ¡Muy bien! ¡Muy buen trabajo! “Very good job!” |
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