What does Eeyore have to do with Latin Comparatives?

Yes, I do mean the Winnie the Pooh character.

 Today I'm going to explain how Eeyore, the character from Winnie the Pooh, can really help you remember how to form Latin comparatives.

Why do we need adjectives?

Because they make things more interesting!

I could easily say something is “good”, but I would rather say something is “better”, or that someone is more healthy.

So comparatives are all about comparing now to a previous state, or comparing one thing to another.

They all have to do with the idea of more. “More big” than something else = bigger, “more thin” = thinner, “more sad” = sadder.

Common Latin Comparatives:

• bigger = maior

• worse = peior

• happier = laetior

• sadder = tristior

• stupider = stultior

• cleverer = callidior

• thinner = angustior

• wider = latior

So once again, my question:

What does Eeyore have to do with this?

Well. Eeyore sounds just like the -ior on the end of all of those comparatives above! He is also sadder than the other characters. He can be described by a comparative!

I never said it was a good link.

It’s silly, but I do think this is a silly and great way to remember what a comparative is and what the ending looks like.

Ok, enough of that. What are Latin Comparatives?

Comparatives are third declension adjectives. If you're talking about a masculine or a feminine noun, the comparative adjectives form using these endings:

-ior, ioris

-ior is the nominative singular ending, and =ioris is the genitive singular.

Now, because they're adjectives, they have to agree with the noun they're describing in case, number and gender.

They can change to any case: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and ablative. They can also be either singular or plural.

You can also have neuter nouns.

Disclaimer: Eeyore doesn't really work for neuter nouns but I just really enjoyed the fact that I could use Eeyore in discussing Latin adjectives. So I've put it in. Anyway…

So for that we need the neuter third declension column.

-ius, ioris

-ius is the nominative singular for a neuter noun. There are some slight differences with the neuter endings from the masculine and feminine endings but they're mostly the same, as you can see from the genitive above. It’s the same for neuter as it is for masculine and feminine nouns.

The really important ones to remember are the nominative singular, and of course the nominative and accusative plurals: “remember, remember, every day, neuter plurals end in -a”.

What do comparatives do?

Well, as the name suggests, they're used in comparisons. A really common way to use a comparison in Latin is to use a comparative + quam.

quam in Latin means various things, but in this case it means “than”. Here's a sentence:

pueri sunt tristiores quam puellae.

The boys are sadder than the girls.

You might notice that puellae is also nominative plural. That's really important to spot: the noun that is being compared to the pueri, the original noun, is in the same case. In this sentence, they're both nominative plural, and that is why tristiores has the -es ending. This is the third declension nominative plural ending, added onto the -ior of the comparative.

Eeyore saves the day

So as long as you remember that Eeyore is sadder than the other characters, you will recognize most comparative adjectives.

Again, you have to also remember -ius for the neuter nouns, but hopefully Eeyore will really help you to pick out most of these types of adjectives.

You do need to know your Latin third declension endings for this, so if you're not sure about those, you can download my Free Noun Endings Guide here. It has all the third declension masculine and feminine endings, so it will really help you when you're starting off with comparatives.

Thanks so much for joining me! I hope Eeyore helps you to remember comparatives! See you next time on bambasbat!