Los comparativos
English makes you choose between 'taller' and 'more expensive'. Spanish never asks: every comparison runs through one of three words — más, menos or tan — and the shape barely changes. Learn the three frames, then four irregulars that refuse to take más at all: mejor, peor, mayor, menor. Along the way come two volume knobs the region uses constantly, -ísimo upward and -ito downward, and the everyday way to ask 'how big?' here: ¿qué tan grande?
Three frames, no endings to learn
Every comparison you will make today fits one of three frames, and nothing inside the adjective ever changes to build them. More: más + adjective + que. Less: menos + adjective + que. The same: tan + adjective + como. So grande stays grande in más grande que, in menos grande que and in tan grande como — the work is done by the little words on either side, not by a suffix. That is the whole system, and it is why Spanish speakers learning English find 'big, bigger, biggest' so tiresome. The adjective still agrees with whatever it describes, exactly as always: Mi hermana es más alta que yo. Mis primos son más altos que yo.
más / menos … que
The frame takes more than adjectives. With an adverb: Camila maneja más despacio que yo. With a noun: Tengo más hermanos que tú. With a verb and nothing in between: Mi tío trabaja más que todos nosotros. One detail worth nailing now, because it is the commonest slip: after que the pronoun stays in its subject form. It is más alto que yo and más alto que tú — never que mí, never que ti. Spanish says 'taller than I', and unlike English it means it. And when the second half of the comparison is obvious, just drop it: —¿Quién come más? —Mi hermano come más.
Equal amounts: tan and tanto
For 'as … as' you need to know whether you are measuring a quality or a quantity. A quality — adjective or adverb — takes tan, which never changes shape: Ella es tan alta como su papá. Habla tan rápido como tú. A quantity — a noun — takes tanto, which agrees like any adjective: tanto, tanta, tantos, tantas. Tengo tanto trabajo como tú. Hay tantas sillas como personas. And a quantity of an action — a bare verb — takes tanto with no agreement at all, because there is no noun for it to agree with: Como tanto como tú. That doubled tanto como looks wrong the first time and is perfectly correct. The closing word in all three cases is como, with no accent: cómo with one is the question word.
Before a number, use de
Numbers break the pattern, and this is the rule learners forget for years. Before a number you say más de or menos de, never que. Hay más de cien personas en el mercado. El taco cuesta menos de veinte pesos. Llegué en menos de diez minutos. The reason is that you are no longer comparing two things — you are marking a point on a scale — so the preposition de does the job. Keep que for two things being weighed against each other: Este taco cuesta más que el otro. There is one more twist to file away for later: no … más que plus a number means 'only'. No tengo más que veinte pesos is 'I only have twenty pesos', while No tengo más de veinte pesos is 'I have twenty at most'. One little word, two different sentences.
The four irregulars
Four adjectives carry their own comparative and flatly refuse más. bueno → mejor (better). malo → peor (worse). grande → mayor (older, greater). pequeño → menor (younger, lesser). You say Este café es mejor que el otro, and más bueno que is the mark of someone who has not learned this section. All four have one plural — mejores, peores, mayores, menores — and no separate feminine, so la mejor arepa and el mejor café use the same word. mayor and menor live mostly in the world of age: mi hermano mayor, mi hermana menor. For plain physical size, go back to the regular frame: más grande, más pequeño, or más chico, which is what you will hear on the street from Mexico to Argentina. Two adverbs join the club: bien → mejor and mal → peor. Canta mejor que yo. Hoy dormí peor que ayer.
The superlative: el más … de
To say 'the most', add an article to the comparative and swap que for de: el / la / los / las + más or menos + adjective + de. Es la ciudad más grande de México. If the noun is spoken, it slots in right after the article: el mercado más grande de la ciudad, la mejor arepa de Bogotá. Watch that de closely, because English uses 'in' there — 'the biggest market in the city' — and translating 'in' word for word produces a sentence no one says. The irregulars behave the same way with an article in front: el mejor, la peor, el mayor, la menor. Es el peor día de la semana. Camila es la menor de la familia.
-ísimo up, -ito down
There is a shortcut for 'extremely' that skips comparison entirely: strip the final vowel, if there is one, and add -ísimo. bueno → buenísimo. grande → grandísimo. fácil → facilísimo. rico → riquísimo — the c becomes qu to keep the /k/ sound, purely a spelling matter. It agrees like any adjective: una casa grandísima, unos tacos riquísimos. Pointing the other way is the suffix this region uses more than any other, -ito / -ita, and it is rarely about size. un cafecito is not a small coffee, it is a friendly one. ahorita stretches from 'right now' to 'in a while' depending on who says it and where. tantito is 'just a tiny bit' — the same tanto you met above, softened. despacito is 'nice and slow'. Turning the volume down is how you sound warm here; turning it up with -ísimo is how you sound impressed.
Asking how much: qué tan, qué tanto
Once you can say 'as big as', you need to ask 'how big?'. Across Latin America the everyday question is qué tan plus an adjective or adverb: ¿Qué tan grande es tu departamento? ¿Qué tan lejos está el mercado? ¿Qué tan seguido vienen ustedes? With a verb or a noun the form is qué tanto: ¿Qué tanto caminaste? ¿Qué tanta gente había? Alongside it lives plain cuánto, understood everywhere and just as correct: ¿Cuánto cuesta? (A textbook written in Spain will offer you ¿cómo de grande? instead; qué tan is what you will actually hear and be asked.) One last small word that lives in the same neighbourhood: no más, placed after a word, means 'just' or 'only' — Uno no más, por favor. Así no más. Pase no más. — and it is one of the friendliest noises in the region.
