Stranger

[ratóncolorao]

Hello,

I would like to know whether these sentences are correct. I would say that it should be "strangest" instead of "stranger". What do you think?

The Guinness World Records lists some very surprising activities among its records. One of the stranger ones has to be blindfolded waterskiing.

Thank you for your help.

 

[Gillnetter]

Hello,

I would like to know whether these sentences are correct. I would say that it should be "strangest" instead of "stranger". What do you think?

The Guinness World Records lists some very surprising activities among its records. One of the stranger ones has to be blindfolded waterskiing.

Thank you for your help.

Stranger is correct here. A blue dog may be stranger than a yellow dog, but a purple and pink dog would be the strangest. Think about comparatives.

 

[ratóncolorao]

Stranger is correct here. A blue dog may be stranger than a yellow dog, but a purple and pink dog would be the strangest. Think about comparatives.

Thank you Gillnetter for your quick answer.

Counting out the following structure “ the older I get, the happier I am”, this is the first time I see a comparative preceded by the determiner “the”, which is a specific characteristic of superlatives: the happiest person in the world, the ugliest woman……

Going back to your examples, you use the comparative preceded by no article, thus:

A blue dog may be stranger than a yellow dog

While when you use the superlative, you do use the article before the superlative, thus:

A purple and pink dog would be the strangest

So, unless you may say: “the blue dog is the stranger one” …. I cannot see the reason for this construction. It still makes no sense to me. I am probably missing something on the way. Would you be able to explain to me this grammatical structure, please?


Thank you very much for your help.

 

[ratóncolorao]

I must add that I have found the use of article before a comparative in those cases in which a group only has two members, like in your example. However, the example I sent is a bit different as there are more than two members, in fact we don’t really know how many members there are.

 

[bhaisahab]

The Guinness World Records lists some very strange dogs among its records. One of the stranger ones is the blue one but the strangest is the purple and pink dog.