Lessons · 24 of 24

Describing things

Big, bigger, very big, biggest — and how to say it about someone.

Describing words are the easiest words in the language: put one in front of a noun and you are done. It never changes — ullu üy "a big house", ariw qız "a beautiful girl". No agreement, no endings, nothing to match. And when the phrase later takes an ending, the ending lands on the noun and the describing word stands there untouched.

More, very, most

Four steps, and the site prints them in this order on every word page, because it is the order they actually climb in:

• ullu — big (base form)
• ulluraq — bigger (comparative — more)
• bek ullu — very big (intensifier — very)
• em ullu — the biggest (superlative — most)

"Very big" is stronger than "bigger" and weaker than "the biggest", so the intensifier sits between them. The shapes agree with the meanings: only the middle step is an ending — raq, or rek after a front-vowel word — while bek "very" and em "most" are separate little words standing in front, which is why they are printed side by side.

The ending is thoroughly ordinary — our sources carry it on dozens of describing words: uzunuraq "longer", terenirek "deeper", kengirek "wider", köbürek "more". Note the softening: a word ending in a hard letter softens it before the ending, so aq gives ağıraq and juwuq gives juwuğuraq — the same softening you heard in the very first lesson, where q and ğ kept trading places.

"Than me" — one word, for now

To compare two things you usually do not even reach for ulluraq. Karachay puts the thing you are comparing against in front, in a shape that carries the "than" all by itself:

• ol menden ulludu — he is bigger than me
• ol senden ulludu — he is bigger than you

Learn menden and senden as single words today — "than me", "than you" — the way you learned salam aleykum as a single greeting. There is an ending hiding inside them, and it does a great deal more than comparing; the next unit takes it apart and gives you the whole set. Nothing is lost by saying these two whole in the meantime, and a good deal is gained: the comparison is the one place a describing word is any use without a sentence around it.

The describing word as the whole sentence

That sentence hides the second trick. ulludu is ullu wearing the to-be endings — the same set you have put on a noun, heard inside qalaysa?, and just used to ask a question. Any describing word takes them, with nothing new to learn at all:

• men ulluma — I am big
• sen ullusa — you are big
• ol ulludu — he / she / it is big
• biz ullubuz — we are big
• siz ullusuz — you all are big
• ala ulludula — they are big

So ol qartdı is "he is old", and the denial is the not-word from earlier in this unit taking the same endings instead: ullu tülme — "I am not big" — or the commoner ullu tülme. The word never changes; the ending moves.

Every describing word on this site shows these tables for its own word, with the opposite one click away.

That closes the unit. You can say who you are and what a thing is, deny it, ask about it, and now describe it and compare it — and you have not met a single verb ending. The next unit puts things in places and gives them owners; the verbs come after that.