The Comparative

To say one thing is more X than another — faster, smaller, older, warmer — German does something English speakers find counterintuitive at first: it adds an ending to the adjective itself rather than a separate word in front of it. Where English splits into two strategies (-er for short words, more for long ones), German uses only one: add -er to the adjective, full stop. There is no German equivalent of more for ordinary gradable adjectives, and reaching for one is the single most common comparative error. This page covers how the comparative is formed, the obligatory umlaut on a predictable set of words, the word als for "than", and how the comparative behaves when it sits in front of a noun.

The core rule: add -er, never use 'more'

The comparative of any ordinary adjective is the adjective plus -er. That is the whole rule for formation.

Look at the last two rows especially. English switches to more for longer words — "more interesting", "more boring" — but German does not care how long the adjective is. interessant becomes interessanter; langweilig becomes langweiliger. The length of the word is irrelevant. German never says mehr interessant to mean "more interesting".

Obligatory umlaut on a predictable set

Many short, common adjectives take an umlaut in the comparative on top of the -er. This is not optional and not random — it falls on a recognizable group of one-syllable adjectives with the back vowels a, o, u.

Be careful: not every short adjective umlauts. Some take a back vowel but stay plain in the comparative — froh → froher (happier), bunt → bunter (more colourful), klar → klarer (clearer), brav → braver (better-behaved), rasch → rascher (quicker). The umlauting set is something you build up by exposure; the ten in the table above are the high-frequency core. When in doubt, the safest default for a word you have not heard is no umlaut — but the words above genuinely require it, and alter, langer, warmer as comparatives are clear mistakes.

'than' is als — not wie

To complete a comparison of inequality, German uses als for "than". This is fixed in the standard language.

The trap for English speakers is not als itself but its neighbour wie. wie means "as" and is used for comparisons of equality — so groß wie (as big as), covered on the equality and gradation page. After a comparative, it must be als. You will hear größer wie ich in casual speech across large parts of the German-speaking world (informal, regional), but it is firmly proscribed in standard written and formal German. In an exam, an email, or any careful register, use als.

Attributive comparatives take an ending too

Everything so far has shown the comparative in the predicate position (after sein), where it ends simply in -er and takes no further ending: Er ist schneller. But the moment a comparative slides in front of a noun, it becomes attributive and must take a normal adjective ending on top of its comparative -er — exactly like any other adjective. The comparative -er becomes part of the stem, and the declension ending stacks onto it.

So schnell → comparative schneller → attributive ein schnelleres Auto. The double -er in schnelleres can look alarming, but it is just the comparative -er (now part of the stem) followed by the neuter strong ending -es. Apply the declension procedure exactly as you would for a positive adjective.

A note on stem-changing adjectives: teuer, dunkel, and friends drop their inner -e- in the comparative too, so "more expensive" is teurer (not teuerer) and "darker" is dunkler. See stem changes.

Why German marks the comparative on the adjective

The deep reason German has no more + adjective is that German, like older English, is a language that prefers to mark grammatical relationships with endings rather than with extra words. English has drifted toward analytic constructions (separate helper words like more, will, of), keeping only the -er relic on its shortest adjectives. German kept the synthetic strategy across the board: the comparative meaning lives inside the adjective as the suffix -er. Once you internalize this — that the comparison is a suffix, not a preceding word — mehr schnell stops being tempting, because it is structurally the same kind of error as saying "more faster" in English.

Common Mistakes

The flagship error, driven straight by the English "more + long adjective" rule. German length-independently uses -er: interessant → interessanter. mehr belongs only with quantities (mehr Zeit, mehr Geld).

Very common, and reinforced by hearing native speakers say it colloquially. After a comparative, standard German requires als. wie is for equality (so groß wie).

Forgetting the umlaut on a word from the obligatory set. alt → älter, not alter. The umlaut is not decorative; alter would be read as a declined positive form (ein alter Mann), not a comparative at all.

Stopping at the comparative -er and forgetting that, in front of a noun, the adjective must also take its case ending. Here the neuter accusative after ein is strong -es, stacked onto schneller: schnelleres.

The -er stem adjectives delete their inner -e- before the comparative ending, just as they do before any ending: teuer → teurer, dunkel → dunkler.

Key Takeaways

• Form the comparative with
  • -er
  on the adjective itself, regardless of word length. German has no more for gradable adjectives — mehr schnell is ungrammatical.
• A predictable set of short adjectives takes an obligatory umlaut: alt → älter, groß → größer, jung → jünger, lang → länger, warm → wärmer, kalt → kälter, stark → stärker.
• "than" is als. Use wie only for equality (so … wie). größer wie is colloquial/regional and proscribed in standard German.
• An attributive comparative takes a normal declension ending on top of -er: ein schnelleres Auto.
• Stem-changing adjectives drop their inner -e- in the comparative too: teuer → teurer, dunkel → dunkler.