Grammatica - loco

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9.2.4
‘More and more’ constructions
Dutch too can say meer en meer, dieper en dieper, but it is more common
to use steeds/alsmaar + comparative, e.g. De hemel werd steeds blauwer
‘The sky was getting bluer and bluer’. Another common alternative is hoe
langer hoe + comparative, e.g. De hemel werd hoe langer hoe blauwer
‘The sky turned progressively bluer’, Hij werd hoe langer hoe brutaler
‘He got more and more cheeky (as time passed)’.
9.2.5
Attributive use of comparative forms
Note the following difference between English and Dutch: De beste van
de twee jongens/De beste van de drie jongens ‘The better of the two boys/
The best of the three boys’, i.e. no such distinction is made in Dutch, but
of course many English-speaking people do not bother to make it either.
A comparative can occur after een, e.g. Ik heb een betere oplossing gevonden
‘I have a better solution’, but Mijn oplossing was de beste van de twee
‘My solution was the better of the two’.
But the comparative is found after both indefinite and definite articles and
demonstratives in expressions like the following where no direct comparison
is being made: een oudere heer ‘an elderly gentleman’, de jongere generatie
‘the younger generation’, de hogere standen ‘the upper classes’.
9.2.6
‘More than’ and ‘as big as’ constructions
Comparatives of the sort ‘He is bigger than I’ are expressed as Hij is
groter dan ik. Colloquially one often hears als instead of dan, but some
purists disapprove of this (see 12.2.1.8 (e)). 3 The very English ‘error’ of
saying ‘She is richer than me’ should be avoided in Dutch, although it is
not unknown there either; the Dutch would nearly always say ik. Similarly
in ‘He is more important than you’, the ‘you’ is jij not jou, i.e. a subject
pronoun. But: Ik vind hem aardiger dan jou, i.e. an object pronoun. (see
8.1.2.6 (a)). Also note Hij is nog langer dan ik ‘He is even taller than I
3 The distinction is actually a dialectal one, but as als corresponds here with German
usage, als with comparatives is erroneously regarded by many as a germanism and is
thus frowned upon.
The
comparative
of the
adjective
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