German Essentials For Dummies by Wendy Foster

Author:Wendy Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

Irregular types of comparisons

German wouldn’t be the same without its three interesting-looking letters that have umlauts (not to mention that cool ess-tset, the letter ß). When forming the comparative and superlative forms of some adjectives and adverbs, be careful to make the spelling change if it’s needed; in other words, add the umlaut when necessary. Also, be sure to memorize the key irregular adjectives and adverbs.

Understanding spelling changes

The general guideline for adding umlauts in comparisons is simple to remember:

Many adjectives and adverbs with one syllable and with an a, o, or u in the base form add an umlaut in the comparative and superlative forms: alt → älter → ältest- (old → older → oldest).

Some common one-syllable words with an a, o or u in the base form don’t have an umlaut: blond (blond[e]), bunt (colorful), falsch (wrong), froh (glad), klar (clear), toll (amazing, great), wahr (true), and laut (loud, noisy). Note: Laut has au in the base form, unlike the others in this list.

The following examples show how these spelling changes look:

Herr Diefenbacher ist alt, aber Frau Kolbe ist noch älter. (Herr Diefenbacher is old, but Frau Kolbe is even older.) The adjective alt (base form) changes to älter, with an umlaut in the comparative form.

Die ärmsten Länder brauchen viel Unterstützung. (The poorest countries need a lot of aid.) The adjective ärmsten is the superlative form; die ärmsten Länder is the subject (nominative case), and it’s plural. Ärmsten precedes the noun, so it needs the adjective ending to reflect Länder. You form it like this: arm- (base form) changes to ärm- (add the umlaut) + -st (superlative ending here is -st; you drop the extra e) + -en (nominative plural ending).

Reviewing irregular comparison forms

German has some wayward characters among adjectives and adverbs, but luckily, a few of these irregular types have parallels to English odd ducks. The classic example is gut → besser → am besten, which is easily recognizable in English as good → better → best.

As you can see from Table 5-5, only a handful of irregular adjectives and adverbs exist, so getting them into your active vocabulary should be a snap.

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