This mini episode teaches you the strange but useful “the more, the more” construction.
Episode 168 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a mini episode that teaches you the strange but useful “the more, the more” construction. Send your questions about English and your suggestions for future episodes to EverybodyESL@gmail.com! (And let me know if you’d like to record the introduction to a future episode.)
Today, I want to teach you a very strange and useful construction. This construction has many different names, but I'm going to call it the “the more, the more construction.” Now, that's kind of a strange name for a strange construction.
Let me give you one example of this construction. Then I will explain it and give you some more examples. We can see this strange construction in this sentence:
“The more, the better.” The more, the better.
Can you believe that's actually a complete sentence in English? Well, it's missing a lot of parts, but it is something that sounds very natural to English speakers. The more, the better. And what does that mean? What does it mean to say, “The more, the better?” It means if there is more of something, then things will be better.
And that's how all of these “the more, the more” constructions work. They all involve two comparative forms—these are forms that use the word more or that use the ending -er. This is the ending you will see on comparative adjectives like taller or shorter or smarter or friendlier.
Here is an example of this construction that is pretty common. You might hear this exact same sentence. The sentence is “The more, the merrier.” The more, the merrier. Now, that's merrier: m-e-r-r-i-e-r. That's the comparative form of the adjective merry. Merry means “happy or cheerful.” And merry is not a very common word. Really, you only hear the word merry in two places these days: you hear it in the phrase “Merry Christmas,” and you hear it in this construction: The more, the merrier.
And what does “The more, the merrier” mean? It means that if there are more people attending some event, the event will be merrier. The event will be happier. Let’s say your friend invites you to a party at his house. And you say, “Is it all right if I bring my sister and her friend with me?” And your friend answers, “Of course! The more, the merrier.” In other words, if more people come to the party, the party will be happier. The more, the merrier.
Now here’s an example of a sentence that uses this “the more, the more” construction, but it's in a longer sentence. Are you ready for it? Here it is:
“The angrier the teacher was, the quieter the students were.” The angrier the teacher was, the quieter the students were. In other words, as the teacher got more angry—that's the same thing as angrier (more angry)—as the teacher got more angry, the students became more quiet (or quieter). The angrier the teacher was, the quieter the student were. The more, the more. Do you see how it works? We have one comparative adjective, and then we have another comparative adjective: the angrier, the quieter.
Notice that in all of these examples that comparative adjective has the word the with it. It is kind of strange. We don't normally speak like this, but this is how this construction works.
Here's another simple example: “The more I study, the better my grades.” The more I study, the better my grades.” There again, you can see those two comparatives—more and then better. And you don't even need to make what sounds like a complete sentence. You don't need to say, “The more I study, the better my grades become.” You can just say, “The more I study, the better my grades.”
Well, that is the strange but useful “the more, the more” construction. And if you listen carefully, you might hear people using it today.