Italian · Chapter 17 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
Comparatives and superlatives
Prescribed by the Edexcel specification - revisited.
The short version
Di compares two things, che compares two qualities
Più alto di Paolo compares two people against one quality, height. Più intelligente che bella compares two qualities of the same person. If you could point at two separate nouns, use di; if you're weighing up two descriptions of one thing, use che.
Maria è più intelligente che bella.
The tallest in the class takes di, not in
Italian treats a superlative's group as the thing it is drawn FROM, so the tallest in the class is il più alto della classe, with di, never in classe. Translating in directly from English is a classic slip with this structure.
Il ragazzo più alto della classe.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 18 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 8 of 14 in this chapter