Archives for: August 2009, 19

Больше

August 19th, 2009 by Don

Another word that means bigger is больше. In this meaning it is what we call a comparative adjective:

Какая страна больше: Казахстан или Молдавия? Which country is bigger: Kazakhstan or Moldova?
Казахстан больше, чем Молдавия. Kazakhstan is bigger than Moldоvа.
Моя машина больше, чем твоя. My car is bigger than yours.
Хотя Соединённый Штаты Америки — большая страна, Россия ещё больше. Although the United States of America is a large country, Russia is even bigger.

Just as with other comparative sentences, if чем is followed by a simple noun phrase in the nominative case, you can make an equivalent phrase without чем by putting the noun in the genitive. Thus the second and third sentences from above can be rephrased as:

Казахстан больше Молдавии.
Моя машина больше твоей.

One thing you can't do with больше is to make a sentence like “John lives in a bigger house than Victor.” When “bigger” directly modifies a noun, Russians have to use either «больший» or «более большой», thus:

Иван живёт в большем доме, чем Виктор. or
Иван живёт в более большом доме, чем Виктор.

Больше has other meanings as well. We will explore them over the next couple weekds.

Posted in Big, bigger, biggest | 1 comment »