Lower Intermediate - Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

العربي بد الجيد
[hope that's right!]

Great lesson guys: and a great PDF you put together too -- thanks for all your efforts [one thing: I think "you must use the elative adjective" near the bottom of page 1 should be "you must use the relative adjective"] Look forward to the next lesson.

Arabic comparative/superlative is certainly simpler than English with its irregular forms [good/better/best] and with longer words taking "more" rather than adding -er... Does Arabic have any common words with non-regular formations or do they all match the patterns shown?

I have a question on اكبر : can it mean older and bigger? So would you use it to say, for example, Australia is bigger than New Zealand as well as using it for older, such as London is older than Sydney? For the latter, London is also bigger/larger than Sydney so to avoid any confusion is there another adjective that is better to use, or do you add extra words to make it clear what you mean?

I was reviewing at lunch and I think I stuffed up. :help:

Is it العربي بد الاجيد [Arabic Pod is the best]

Or am I completely confused? :)

I feel I'm spamming you... :D

I woke up this morning and realised you had already done a lesson on ArabicPod is the best... I noticed reviewing it I got pod wrong, and you used افضل for best... Can you use some form of جيد as I attempted to, or does that not work in Arabic? Thanks -- and sorry for the 1001 questions: quiet days at work. :)

@climacus, it's great seeing all these good questions on here :-)

أفضل is better to use in Arabic to mean best, or أحسن which is actually used more than أفضل in the street.

the comparative form of جيد is أجيد but I have never heard anyone use it in the street. it's always أحسن or أفضل

To say ArabicPod is the best, you can say
أرابيك بود هو أفضل موقع or
أرابيك بود هو الأفضل

About your questions on أكبر, literally it means bigger and it is used to mean older, but only with age... So you cannot say

لندن أكبر من سيدني to mean London is older than Sydney, but you should use the word أقدم instead. أقدم leans older, but you cannot use it with age.

To say 'old' with regards to age you can say
كبير في العمر
or
عجوز

1001 Moshaya: very helpful, very clear and very appreciated.

@climacus, I should have mentioned that the reason أكبر is used with age is because it relates to the age number. When we say A is أكبر than B, we mean A has a bigger age than B, but obviously this word gets translated to English as older.

Same with younger, we actually use the word for "smaller" to mean younger which is أصغر, again for the same reason as it relates to the age.

Hence أكبر can mean older & bigger, and أصغر can mean younger & smaller.

Thanks Moshaya; I appreciate the thoroughness in your replies.

شكرا جزيلا على جهودكم للدرس.هذا أسهل قواعد لي!

I tried to write some adjectives myself.
أجمل ,أحزن,أسرع ,أسعد,أصعب ...

And there are some that I couldn't be sure.
Hot and extremely are like this?
Sorry I couldn't put on shadda.

أحرّ,أشدّ

And this one,'important'
مهم= هاّم؟
is أمهم
correct?

I would appreciate some help. :-)

Kurumi, you got it them all right apart from (مهم= هاّم), where the correct form is (مهم = أهمّ).

7aadir,shukran Ehab! ;-)