For all who have a better grasp of English grammar than I 8I’m not even sure if that is correct – should it be “me” or “I”)
In class we have been teaching comparatives and superlatives. Today we were focusing on comparatives and superlatives which are created by preceding the word with “more” or “most”, rather than by adding the “er/est” suffix. My JTE wrote a list of the words for which this rules applies: interesting, exciting, moving, difficult etc. The last word he included was “slowly”
This is where my brain halted and rebeled!
I know we can and do use “more slowly”, as in sentences such as “Can you do this more slowly please”. However I cannot think of any examples where we would use “most slowly”. It grates against my personal English grammar, but my JTE was very certain and told me it was correct.
To my mind, we would use “slower” and “slowest” more readily. They seem the natual choices to me.
So which is correct? Does “slowly” fall into the category of words which can be made comparative/superlative by “more/most”?
Yay for Google!
Here are some examples of “most slowly”:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22most+slowly%22&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryAU
Personally, it sounds odd to me. I don’t use the phrase “most slowly” – “slowest” is more natural, IMO.
Asking the grmamar queen here at work, she says it’s not common, but not wrong either.
‘The car preceding msotly slowly was abc123’. etc.
It’s a more awkward phraseology to me…
“than me” — it’s the object of the sentence.
English goes “subject verb object” when you’re doing active sentences (better) and “object verb subject” when you’re doing passive (scientific, better to avoid).
Ie: The cat sat on the mat.
Verb? Sat.
Who sat? The cat (subject)
Sat where/what? On the mat (object).
It’s “I” when it’s a subject (I speak better English than you) and “me” when it’s an object (He came to the movies with me, she speaks better English than me).
As for comparatives, superlatives, my understanding is that more/most applies only to adjectives made from present participles like your string of ‘ing’ examples and adjectives with more than three syllables (like ‘beautiful’). The reason you’re rebelling a little here is that ‘slowly’ is an adverb, not an adjective. ‘Slower’ and ‘slowest’ are the comparative and superlative adjective from ‘slow’, whereas ‘more slowly’ and ‘most slowly’ relate to the adverb ‘slowly’. Your example is correct: the ‘more slowly’ relates to the verb ‘do’.
As for an example with ‘most slowly’, what about “Of all the children, he responded the most slowly.” (It’s definitely correct; ‘slowest’ would be an incorrectly used adjective. Just like saying “it was real good to see you’ instead of ‘it was really good to see you’.)
And for trivia, that’s why you shouldn’t say ‘good’ when someone asks you how you are. ‘Good’ is the adjective; ‘well’ is the adverb. (Yes, my father used to slap my hand when I got this wrong; why do you ask?)
Sorry, not ‘more than three syllables’, it’s ‘three or more syllables’.
And in case I didn’t make it clear, ‘more’ and ‘most’ also apply to adverbs (mostly identified by the telltale ‘ly’ on the end of them although there are exceptions, like ‘well’).
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!
I wish I could download all of your English knowledge into my brain. Thank-you for the clear explantions and examples. Now it all makes sense.
Thankfully I am unsure enough of my own knowledge to have not pressed the issue. Plus, generally speaking, the JTEs do have better grammatical knowledge of English than most native English speaking teachers.
Hey my lovely Amber!
Suggestions:
You’ve got the Cambridge English Grammar in Use books right?
Providing you’ve got the same versions I do, take a look at Elementary unit 86-87… It has a good simple explanation – that section of the book is all about adverbs and adjectives so flicking between the pages could help. Also Intermediate Unit 99 is good for differentiating adjectives and adverbs.
I’m a total grammar geek, but I learn new stuff all the time from these books! They’re great! 🙂