Exactely when do you put 'even' before the comparative words? One of common mistake that non-natives say is something as below. (B is a non-native here) A: How was the movie? (expecting a good re

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Exactely when do you put 'even' before the comparative words? One of common mistake that non-natives say is something as below. (B is a non-native here) A: How was the movie? (expecting a good response) B: It was better than I expected. (meaning it was even better than he thought) A: Oh... well... (disappointed and thinks B didn't expect the movie that much) As such, some of Youtube English classes mentioned that if you say like B did, where something is just better, not even better, than the other thing, then automatically the other thing feels not much at all. So, I thought until now that if something is great already, and if you like to emphasize the other thing is greater than that, you should always use 'even' before the comparative word. Like "The cake tastes great, and the liquor is even greater", not "liquor is greater". But I saw today, in my grammar book, this sentence below. I am pretty tall, but my dad is taller. And here I'm confused. Why didn't they say "my dad is even taller"? Is it because of the word 'but' here? What's the golden rule of putting 'even' before the comparative words at all?

5 de dez de 2019 03:28

Respostas · 10

An example, two young boys on the playground: Sam: “Wow Tom, your pretty tall.” Tom: “I am tall, but my dad is taller.” Sam: “yeah, but my dad is even taller than your dad.” It can be used for emphasis. However, the examples you mentioned can be said either way. You can say “I am tall, but my dad is taller” or “I am tall, but my dads even taller”. The sentence alone has relatively the exact same meaning. Even, in my opinion, it is used more often when the speaker is trying to emphasize what they are comparing as being better or more exciting or more impressive than the other. Another example: “I am a great baseball player, but I am an even better soccer player” I already said I am great at baseball, so to get the message across that I play soccer better than I play baseball I can use ”even”. Of course you can always say “I am great at baseball, but I am better at soccer”. But if you wanted to emphasis that it’s impressive that you could be better than you already are you could use “even better”. I hope this helps you a little bit, English can be confusing sometimes.

5 de dezembro de 2019

How was the movie? It was better than I expected. (low/medium expectations, exceeded) I was expecting it to be great and it was even better than I expected. (high expectations, exceeded) I wasn't expecting much but I really loved it! (low expectations, greatly exceeded) His English is worse than my French. (doesn't say much about either's level) His English is even worse than my French. (My English is bad. His French is worse.)

5 de dezembro de 2019

There’s a couple things going on. One is that when you say “ where something is just better, not even better, than the other thing, then automatically the other thing feels not much at all.”, it’s kind of true, but not always a very strong effect. So when you had the idea that you *always* need even that’s the problem. The person saying B could still mean they really enjoyed it, depending on emphasis and tone of voice. The other is that your counter example has the word but. Using “but” makes what comes after stand in opposition to what came before so it doesn’t need “even” to work. You are correct that you can also use even there. Another point is you want a grammar rule that’s hard and fast, but languages don’t follow rules, people make up rules to try to describe languages. The rules are generally not always correct.

5 de dezembro de 2019

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