Japanese 269 - Comparisons with より ~ ほうが

We've learned how to use より to compare nouns, and now we’re going to learn a similar construction that allows us to compare adjectives and verbs as well.

In Japanese, adjectives don’t change when you want to make a comparison. Rather than adding a suffix to them as in English (e.g. fast, faster), in Japanese we use the phrase より ~ ほうが also written as より ~ ほう.

In a previous lesson, we learned to say:

When using より ~ ほうが, we would say:

より ~ ほうが combines with nouns, adjectives and verbs as follows:

Noun 1よりNoun 2 + ほう が
い-adjective 1よりい-adjective 2ほう が
な-adjective + よりな-adjective + ほう が
Verb 1よりVerb 2ほう が

See the below tables for some more examples:

You can also write より and ほう the other way around, as you can see in the following sentences.

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