Special constructions with the comparative

In a previous post, we saw the formation of the comparative and superlative in English. Today, we are going to deal with two special comparative constructions:

• The comparative of gradation or double comparative: two comparatives of the same adjective connected by and. This structure is generally used with the verbs get, grow and become and it implies constant change. (In Spanish it translates as “cada vez más...”)
• -er and -er: It’s growing darker and darker. I’m getting fatter and fatter.
• more and more: This situation has become more and more difficult. Note that when we use more and more we don’t repeat the adjective or adverb.
• less and less: Fortunately, her headaches became less and less frequent, until they ceased altogether.
• Comparative of proportion: two comparatives preceded by the forming parallel sentences. It is used to express proportional increase or decrease, or two changes that happen together. (In Spanish it translates as “cuanto más... más...)
• the  -er... the -er: The older you are, the happier you get. The sooner, the better.
• the more... the more.../ the more... the less... / the less... the less...:  The more I study, the less I know.

The more I study, the less I know
Image by betta design in Flickr

Idioms with comparisons
The comparative of equality as....as..., (not) so....as... is not a special construction as such, but there are many idioms that contain a comparison of this kind. They are mostly used in the description of people, and as all idioms, they cannot be translated literally, but a similar expression must be found in the other language. For instance, in Spanish, most of these comparisons will translate as comparatives of superiority (más... que) rather than equality: As black as coal (más negro que el carbón), as quick as lightning (más rápido que una centella), as pleased as Punch (más contento que unas pascuas). A literal translation will not have any meaning at all.

As pleased as Punch
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These comparisons usually follow the pattern “as + adjective as + noun” where the adjective generally expresses the quality that the noun is known to possess. But there are many of them in which adjective and noun rhyme (as loose as a goose) or there is alliteration, that is, repetition of a sound (as busy as a bee).
As a learner of English that wants to excel, you should try to use these idioms whenever necessary, but try not to overdo it, as you may not sound natural and the result may be the opposite of what you expected to achieve. Let’s try to learn a few of these comparisons in the following presentation. Then you can do the exercises below to check how much you have learnt.

More idioms here.

More exercises here.

In The phrase finder you can see the origin of some of these idioms.

Collocations: spend and waste

Both verbs spend and waste are related to time and money, but there is a big difference in meaning:

• You can spend your money on things, but if you buy more than is necessary or things that are not useful, you are wasting your money. She has spent a lot of money on her wedding dress. (and she thinks that’s money well spent). She wastes lots of money on clothes she doesn´t need. (that money is not well spent)
• Likewise, you can spend time doing something, which is possitive, but if you feel that the time passes in a negative, unproductive manner, then you’re wasting your time. You spend a lot of hours watching TV and I think you are wasting your time. Go on, do something useful!

Picture by 401(K) 2012

So, both spend and waste can form collocations with words related to money and time. Here are a few: spend your free time, the day, the weekend, an hour, a fortune, thousands,...

Apart from these, they can also be found in other collocations which are not related to time or money:

• Waste an opportunity. Never waste an opportunity to say “I love you” to someone you really like.
• Spend (a lot of) effort. You spend too much effort on things that are not important.

Waste is also a noun that refers to an unusuable or unwanted substance or material. In this case, we can find expressions such as: industrial waste, nuclear waste, waste disposal, waste pipes,...

A Complete Waste of Time

There are also some idioms and proverbs:

• Waste one’s breath: to waste time talking trying to persuade someone.  Don’t waste your breath, you’re not going to make me change my mind.
• Waste not, want not is a proverb which means that if you use your resources wisely, you will never be poor or needy.
• Go to waste: to be unused and therefore thrown away. If you don’t eat the meat in your fridge today, it will go to waste.
• A waste of space: a thing or person that is not useful. Her husband is a complete waste of space.
• Spend a penny means to go to the toilet. In England, public toilets for ladies used to have coin operated locks, and if someone wanted to use them they had to introduce a penny coin in the slot. This idiom is a bit old-fashioned these days.

Penny slot toilet door lock

Finally, let’s watch an excerpt from Fawlty Towers that always comes to my mind when I hear the expression “a waste of space”. Poor Manuel! Always being bossed around by Basil!

The names of the days of the week

While it is rather clear that Sunday is the day of the sun and Monday the day of the moon, where does Tuesday or Wednesday get their names from? Are they all related to the names of the planets?

The first thing that springs to my mind is why there are seven days in the week. We are so much used to it that it may seem natural to us, but nothing related to the calendar is natural. It’s just a convention, a system humans invented to divide time, and it’s not perfect, as most things made by humans.

A T-shirt for each of the seven days of the week.
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The seven day week came into use in Roman times after the Julian calendar was introduced in 46 BC. However, both the Jews and the Babylonians had used it before: in the Bible, God is said to have created the world in six days and needed the seventh to have a rest, while the Babylonians divided the lunar month in four seven day periods.
It was the Greeks and later the Romans, who always followed in the steps of the Greeks, who started to call the days of the week after the main celestial bodies that were seen from the earth, and of course, these bodies were called after their main gods and goddesses.

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Apart from the day of the sun (dies solis) and the moon (dies lunae), they had dies martis for Mars, god of war, dies mercurii for Mercury, god of commerce, dies iovis for Jupiter, the father of the gods and responsible for thunder and lightning, dies veneri for Venus, goddess of love, and dies saturni for Saturn, god of agriculture.
Most of these names still survive in Romance languages, with some exceptions such as the change of Sunday for “the day of the lord” or dominicus dies, which gave “domingo” in Spanish or “dimanche” in  French. A different case is Portuguese, which changed the names of these pagan gods for ordinal numbers.
The Germanic peoples, however, substituted the names of Roman gods with their own, forgetting in this way that week days owed their names to the planets. They also used their own words for sun and moon. English being a Germanic language, it kept the names of these, and so we have:

• Tuesday: the day of the god Tiw or Twia, the god of war.
• Wednesday: the day of Woden or Odin. He was the carrier of the dead.
• Thursday: the day of Thor, god of thunder.
• Friday: the day of Freya, goddess of love, beauty and fertility.
• Saturday: the day of Saturn, the only Roman god they kept.

Finally, remember that it’s not the same to say “day of the week” or “weekday”. The former is any day of the week, while the latter is used for work days, that is from Monday to Friday, excluding Saturday and Sunday.

A good song to practise the days of the week is “Friday I’m in love” by The Cure. Enjoy!

English verb tenses

One of the things language students fear most is learning the verbal forms, as they can be really complex. Just have a look at the conjugation of verbs in French and Spanish: there are so many different moods, tenses... and you also have to learn the different endings of the persons! That can be complicated and time-consuming! However, English verbs are so simple to learn compared with the verbal forms in those languages that I always tell my students they are lucky to be learning English and not Spanish.

Studying
Image by Paalia

In English there are three verbal moods or modes: indicative, subjunctive and imperative. The most widely used is the indicative, as the subjunctive has almost disappeared from the language and is only used in certain types of sentences like the conditionals; and the imperative has only one form, which is the same as the infinitive.
So, today, we are only going to deal with the indicative mood in the active voice, and we will just see the form and not the uses of the tenses, which have been dealt with in previous posts.

Apart from the tenses, there are other verbal forms that do not change:

• the present participle or gerund, also called “the -ing form”. (working)
• the past participle, which ends in -ed for regular verbs (worked), while for the irregular verbs, it’s the third column (break, broke, broken)

Both these forms help us construct the tenses as we are going to see right now.

All the tenses express either the present, the past or the future and they all follow the same pattern, so it’s really easy to learn them:

• Simple
• Continuous
• Perfect:
• simple
• continuous

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The simple tenses use the infinitive or root of the verb:

• In the present they do not add any suffixes to the root, except for the -s in the third person.
• In the past they add the suffix -ed to the root (only in regular verbs, of course).
• In the future they go with the verb will and do not add any suffixes.

The continuous tenses need the auxiliary verb to be:

• In the present the verb to be is in the present: am / is / are.
• In the past the verb to be is in the past: was / were.
• In the future the verb to be follows the auxiliary will.

The perfect tenses need the auxiliary have:

• In the present, have is in the present: have / has.
• In the past have is in the past: had.
• In the future, have follows the auxiliary verb will.

Notice that the perfect tenses can either be simple or continuous. In the latter case, apart from the auxiliary have, they also need the verb to be. Besides, the auxiliary have is always followed by a past participle, while the auxiliary to be is always followed by the -ing form.

Let’s have a look at this table to see the conjugation of the verb to work. Please, note that I have left out the pronouns when there is no difference in inflexion.

	PRESENT	PAST	FUTURE
SIMPLE	I work /he works	worked	will work
CONTINUOUS	I am /you are /he is working	I was /you were working	will be working
PERFECT SIMPLE	I have / he has worked	had worked	will have worked
PERFECT CONT.	I have / he has been working	had been working	will have been working

Now, do you agree with me that learning the English tenses is as easy as ABC?
If you want to check that you can remember the names of the tenses, do this exercise:

Last or latest?

Last and latest are both superlative forms of the word late, but they do not have the same meaning:

• Last means “final”. The Tempest was Shakespeare’s last play. (He didn’t write any other after that and, being long dead, he won’t write any more).
• Latest means “newest”, “most recent”. Dan Brown’s latest novel is The Lost Symbol. (That’s his newest novel, but not the last one, because he is alive and kicking, so he can still write more and he will probably do so).

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Late also has two comparative forms: one is regular (later) and the other is irregular (latter). They cannot be used as synonyms either:

• Later means “afterwards”. It is widely used as a connector of time and sequence along with words like: then, next, after that, etc.
• Latter refers to the second of two things or people mentioned: I love my two cousins, George and Don, but the latter is clearly my favourite. In this example, “the latter” refers to the second cousin mentioned: Don. If we wanted to refer to George, we would use the term former, which means “the first of the above mentioned”.

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The word late can be used as an adjective or an adverb:

• adjective: She got married in her late twenties.
• adverb: The birthday card arrived three days late.

There is another adverb derived from late: lately, which means “recently”: I haven’t heard from Peter lately. (Note that this adverb is usually used with a perfect tense).
Another adverb related to late is lastly, which is used to introduce the last in a list of things. I’ve got many things to do this weekend: first I'm going to the supermarket, secondly to the zoo, and lastly to the cinema.
For more information about the difference between adjectives and adverbs you can read this previous post.

Idioms

• Last but not least is used when mentioning the last person or thing of a group, in order to state that they are not less important than the others. And last but not least, I’d like to thank my parents for their help and support.
• At (long) last: after much delay, finally. At last we’re home!
• Last orders: the last opportunity for people to buy drinks in a pub before it closes. It’s mainly used in British English.
• The day /week /month before last is the penultimate day, week or month.
• The last straw is the last in a series of events that, when added to the others, makes the situation unbearable. It’s a variation of the Arabic proverb the straw that broke the camel’s back.

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Now you can do this exercise to check how much you have learnt.

Fancy another exercise? Choose the correct word.

Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee

It was sixty years ago when Elizabeth Windsor became Queen of England. When she was born, nobody could imagine that one day she would be crowned, because it wasn’t her father but her uncle Edward who was the king. However, an unprecedented event turned things over. Edward VIII was in love with a twice divorced American lady called Wallis Simpson, who wouldn’t be accepted as queen by the government. He had to choose between his throne or the woman he loved and he decided to abdicate. So, it was Elizabeth’s father who became king under the name of George VI.

 The official picture of the Queen on her accession to the throne in February 1952. (Getty Images) 

These days, the people of the United Kingdom are celebrating that their queen has been in the throne for 60 years, and this celebration is called the Diamond Jubilee. They previously celebrated the Silver Jubilee (25th anniversary) and Golden Jubilee (50th anniversary) back in 1977 and 2002 respectively.

The celebrations started in February 2012, but the most important events will take place between the 2nd and 5th of June. One of the most colourful will be the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant, a spectacular ceremony in which more than a thousand boats will accompany the Queen’s barge: it will be one of the largest flotillas ever assembled on the river Thames.

Image by Katybird in Flickr

The following video summarises the life of Queen Elizabeth with its ups and downs. You can answer the questions after watching it.

All the words of the English language fall into one of these eight categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. Likewise, there are several types of pronouns:

• personal: I, me,...
• possessive: mine, yours,...
• reflexive: myself, yourself,...
• demonstrative: this, that,...
• indefinite: some, any,...
• interrogative: who, what,...
• relative: which, that,...

Today we are going to see the first three types, which, like all pronouns, are used instead of nouns. Don’t get confused: personal pronouns do not only refer to persons. They are called like that because they refer to the three grammatical persons:

• First: person who speaks
• Second: person who is spoken to
• Third: a person or thing different from the first and second.

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Some personal pronouns can be the subject of a sentence, others can be direct or indirect objects. They can refer to the first, second or third person, and they can be plural or singular. Only the third person singular pronouns can be masculine (he/him), feminine (she/ her) and neuter (it).
You can find all these pronouns in the table below. Note also that I have included the possessive adjectives because their use is very close to that of the possessive pronouns.

Persons	Subject pronouns	Object pronouns	Possessive adjectives	Possessive pronouns	Reflexive pronouns
1st. p. sing	I	me	my	mine	myself
2nd p. sing.	you	you	your	yours	yourself
3rd p. sing. masc.	he	him	his	his	himself
3rd p. sing. fem.	she	her	her	hers	herself
3rd p. sing. neut.	it	it	its	its	itself
1st p. plural	we	us	our	ours	ourselves
2nd. p. plural	you	you	your	yours	yourselves
3rd p. plural	they	them	their	theirs	themselves

Let’s see how we can use these pronouns:
Subject and object pronouns:
If we had to change the nouns for pronouns in this sentence Paul loves Laura, which ones would you use? Taking into account that Paul is the subject and Laura is the direct object, the sentence would be He loves her. We cannot say *He loves she, as she is a subject pronoun, not an object pronoun. (See table above).
Object pronouns can also go after prepositions: Hurry up! They are waiting for us, not *They are waiting for we.
In comparative sentences we can use both subject and object pronouns after the words than or as. However, we should use the subject pronouns in more formal contexts, while object pronouns are used in more colloquial sentences.
He works harder than I. (formal) He works harder than me. (colloquial)
She is not as intelligent as he. (formal). She is not as intelligent as him. (colloquial)

Possessives:
Possessive adjectives accompany nouns, while possessive pronouns go alone.
That’s her car and this is mine.
        adjective                 pronoun
Possessives agree with the possessor and not with the thing possessed.
That’s my book. Those are my books.
Note that the possessive adjective remains the same with either singular or plural nouns.

Yours, mine, ours...
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Reflexive:
Reflexive pronouns are used in cases when the same person is the subject and the object of the sentence. Sarah is teaching herself to speak Spanish.
In this example Sarah both does and receives the action of the verb.
They can also be used as indirect objects: I bought myself a beautiful watch. And also as the object of a preposition: He is angry with himself for failing the exam.
Sometimes they are used for emphasis: I don’t think you need help with your homework. You can do it yourself.
Preceded by the preposition by, reflexive pronouns mean “alone”: He likes living by himself = He likes living alone.

Image by SweetOnVeg

Apart from these, which are widely used in the language today, there are also some personal and possessive pronouns which, though archaic, are still used in literary and religious contexts: thou (you), thee (you, object), thine (your, possessive before a word beginning with a vowel), thy (your, before consonant). They were originally used for the 2nd person singular in a familiar context, while you was more formal and used as a sign of respect, much like Spanish “usted” or French “vous”. However, this word drove out the use of thou, which today is only used in poetry and religion. Here’s an example of a well-known prayer:
Our Father, who art in heaven
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
Finally, let’s practise what we have learnt today with these exercises:

• Object pronouns
• Possessive adjectives or pronouns?
• Reflexive pronouns
• Cloze test