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Lesson Transcript

Hi, everyone! I'm Felice Angelini.
Ciao a tutti, sono Felice Angelini.
Welcome to another Italian Whiteboard Lesson!
In this lesson, you'll learn how to make comparisons in Italian.
Let's get started!
When making comparisons, it's very important to keep in mind the gender of the nouns you're using, but don't be scared! We'll go through this step by step.
We'll first see a very useful sentence pattern.
Let's say you want to compare two places, for example, two cities.
Here's how you do it:
[PLACE] è più [ADJECTIVE] di [PLACE].
In English: “[PLACE] is more [ADJECTIVE] than [PLACE].”
The key words in this pattern are
è più "is more"
and
di "than."
This pattern is very similar to the English one, the only difference is that you need to be aware of the gender.
Let's look at some examples with city names.
For the first example, let's use the cities Rome, Roma, and Florence, Firenze.
We can compare how big they are by using the adjective grande, "big."
Roma è più grande di Firenze.
"Rome is bigger than Florence."
Here, we are lucky that "big," grande, is the same for both masculine and feminine nouns, but that is not the case for all adjectives.
Now, let's consider an adjective that changes depending on the gender. For example, freddo, "cold."
Let's continue using cities for our examples.
It's useful to know that in Italian all city names are feminine, so when talking about cities, we'll need to use the feminine form of the adjective.
Thus, adjectives like freddo would be said as fredda.
For example, take the sentence:
Bologna è più fredda di Napoli.
"Bologna is colder than Naples."
Again, our pattern is
[PLACE] è più [ADJECTIVE] di [PLACE].
In English: "[PLACE] is more [ADJECTIVE] than [PLACE]."
Actually, as long as you remember to use the right gender for the adjective, you can apply this pattern to any situation:
[NOUN] è più [ADJECTIVE] di [NOUN].
In English: "[NOUN] is more [ADJECTIVE] than [NOUN]."
Let's hear a dialogue between two friends. One is asking the other about his hometown. Let's focus on the response.
A: È piccola Firenze?
B: Firenze è più piccola di Roma.
Well, let's see the dialogue tiwhin the translation.
A: È piccola Firenze?
A: "Is Florence small?"
B:Firenze è più piccola di Roma.
B: "Florence is smaller than Rome."
So in this answer, we can notice the key phrase ... è più... di..., "...is more... than..."; and the adjective, piccola.
Piccola is the feminine form of the adjective "small." In this case, the feminine one because we're talking about the city, and cities in Italian are always feminine. So remember it!
When comparing two cities, there are other adjectives you can use.
We already saw piccola, which comes from piccolo and means "small." Piccola.
For example,
Firenze è più piccola di Roma.
"Florence is smaller than Rome."
We also saw grande, which doesn't change depending on the gender. Grande.
For example,
Milano è più grande di Firenze.
"Milano is bigger than Florence."
Next, we have popolosa, which comes from popoloso and means "(densely) populated." Popolosa.
For example,
Napoli è più popolosa di Firenze.
"Naples is more densely populated than Florence."
We also have antica, which comes from antico and means "ancient." Antica.
For example,
Roma è più antica di Milano.
"Rome is more ancient than Milano."
As we've seen, we also have fredda, which comes from freddo and means "cold." Fredda.
For example,
Milano è più fredda di Roma.
"Milano is colder than Rome."
We can also use piovosa, which comes from piovoso and means "rainy." Piovoso.
For example,
Bologna è più piovosa di Napoli.
"Bologna is rainier than Naples."
Ok, let's go through the adjectives one more time:
piccolo, piccola - "small"
grande - "big"
popoloso, popolosa - "(densely) populated"
antico, antica - "ancient"
freddo, fredda - "cold"
piovoso, piovosa - "rainy"

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