Marhaba! Right now we're going to talk about comparatives in Arabic. If you
watch the video on superlatives, you remember that we can use the وزن
أفعل to express that idea. So if we want to talk about the 'tallest building' in
the city, we could say أطول, right, we start with طويل, take that root,
we take the root and we put it in the أفعل, pattern right, أطول بناية
'the tallest building.' Or if we wanted to take طيّب, meaning 'tasty,'
and talk about the very tastiest falafel, we could say أطيَب
فلافل. And we remember that when we're talking about superlatives, we take
that أفعَل word, and we put it in front of the noun it's describing, like it's
the first term of an إضافة. 'The tallest of buildings,' 'the tastiest of falafel,'
right. Now the comparative, in order to compare things, we use the same وزن,
أفعَل, but we put it after the noun we're describing, like it's an adjective. So if
we want to say, maybe not the tallest building ever, but 'a taller building,' we
would say بناية أطول, or 'tastier falafel,' tastier than from the place down
the street, فلافل أطيب, which doesn't carry that superlative sense,
right not 'the tastiest, 'the tallest, but tastier. Now if we want to do a direct
comparison, we need to use the helping preposition مِن, right? So suppose I want
to say 'I am younger than my brother.' We start with that adjective for young, صغير
and then I can turn it into أفعَل, and I can say for example, Anna
أنا أصغَر من أخي.
Right? I'm not the youngest person in the world, but I'm
younger than my brother. Or 'New York City is bigger than Beirut.' We start with that
word for big, كبير, which we can then put in the وزن أفعَل, and we can say
مدينة نيو يورك أكبر من مدينة بيروت.
'Younger than,' 'bigger than,' using the same وزن أفعَل, along with the
helping preposition من. And that's the comparative in Arabic!