Comparative of adjectives

Warmer, colder, better, worse

English makes a comparison by adding -er (warm, warmer) or putting more in front (more humid). Serbian always changes the adjective itself: it adds an ending to the stem, and the ending comes in three shapes. Which shape an adjective takes is a property of that adjective, so the comparative is learnt together with the word, the way you learn a noun's gender. The good news is that there are only three shapes plus a handful of irregulars, and the most common one, -iji, covers the great majority of adjectives.

The -iji type: the default

Most adjectives, and nearly every adjective of two or more syllables, take -iji. Start from the stem you already use for the feminine form: if the masculine has a fleeting a (hladan – hladna, vlažan – vlažna), it disappears here too, so the comparatives are hladniji and vlažniji, never hladaniji. topao has the feminine topla, so the comparative is topliji. When in doubt, this is the ending to guess.

The -ji type: the consonant softens

A group of short, mostly one-syllable adjectives takes -ji, and the j never survives on its own: it melts into the final consonant of the stem and changes it. That is why you see jak become jači, dug become duži, mlad become mlađi and tih become tiši. The pattern of changes is regular (k becomes č, g becomes ž, h becomes š, d becomes đ, t becomes ć, z becomes ž, s becomes š), but which adjectives belong to this group is not predictable, so treat each one as a word to learn. visok and a few others also drop their last syllable first: visok – viši.

The -ši type: three words

Only three adjectives take -ši, and all three are everyday words: lep – lepši, lak – lakši, mek – mekši. Learn them as a set.

The irregulars

As in English (good – better, bad – worse), the most common adjectives have comparatives that look nothing like the positive: dobar – bolji, loš – gori, velik – veći, mali – manji. Nothing to work out here; these four are simply memorised, and you will use them more than all the others together.

A comparative is still an adjective

Whatever ending it took, the comparative agrees with its noun in gender, number and case exactly like any other adjective you have met. Nearly every comparative ends in a soft consonant (j, č, ć, đ, ž, š), and the one that does not, gori, behaves as if it did: a comparative always takes the endings you know from vruć or loš — masculine -i, feminine -a, neuter -e, and the usual case endings after that. So bolji dan but bolja prognoza, veći oblak but veća oluja, manji grad but manja reka; and in the accusative lakšu jaknu, in the genitive boljeg druga.

The neuter singular form is also the one you use when there is no noun at all, which is how most weather talk goes: Danas je toplije. (It is warmer today.) Sutra će biti hladnije. (Tomorrow it will be colder.) Vreme je bolje. (The weather is better.) Magla je bila gora. (The fog was worse.) The neuter manje also works as a quantity word, like malo: manje snega (less snow).

Sve plus a comparative

Put sve in front of a comparative and you get more and more: Dani su sve topliji (the days are getting warmer and warmer), Oblaci su sve veći (the clouds keep getting bigger). It is the natural way to talk about weather that is changing.

In this lesson you compare with the situation before: danas, sada, ove godine. Saying warmer than yesterday needs a small construction of its own, which comes two lessons from now, so for the moment keep the comparative bare. Two forms to watch: više is both higher (from visok) and more, and gore is both worse (from loš) and up — the sentence around them tells you which.