Word
Quel vestito è più stravagante che bello.
Meaning
That dress is more extravagant than beautiful.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Quel vestito è più stravagante che bello.
essere
to be
bello
beautiful
il vestito
the dress / the clothes
quello
that
Questions & Answers about Quel vestito è più stravagante che bello.
Why do we use che instead of di to mean "than" here?
When you are comparing two different qualities (adjectives) of the exact same subject, Italian uses più... che.... Here, we are comparing the adjectives stravagante and bello to describe a single dress. If you were comparing two different dresses using one adjective (e.g., "This dress is more beautiful than that one"), you would use più... di....
Since our current lesson is about abstract concepts like il bello, why is there no article before bello in this sentence?
Because here bello is just a regular adjective describing the dress. You use the abstract noun il bello when you want to say "the beautiful thing" or "what is beautiful" as a standalone concept. For example, if you wanted to say "The beautiful thing about this dress is its color," you would say: Il bello di questo vestito è il suo colore.
Why is it Quel vestito and not Quello vestito?
The demonstrative adjective quello (that) changes its ending depending on the noun that follows it, using the exact same rules as the definite article ("the"). Because vestito is a masculine singular noun that starts with a simple consonant, it takes the article il (il vestito). Therefore, quello shrinks down to match it, becoming quel.
If the noun was feminine, like Quella gonna (That skirt), how would the rest of the sentence change?