Irregular Comparatives: bon → meilleur, bien → mieux
अनियमित तुलनात्मक रूप: bon → meilleur, bien → mieux
A small handful of very common words refuse to take plus at all — and Hindi has its own matching irregular pair, अच्छा → बेहतर, so the idea of a suppletive comparative form isn't new. What is new is that French insists on two separate words, meilleur and mieux, for a distinction Hindi collapses into one, बेहतर.
Grammar Comparison
व्याकरण तुलना
bon (adjective) → meilleur ≈ अच्छा → बेहतर
Ce gâteau est meilleur. (This cake is better.) — never plus bon
यह केक बेहतर है।
bon ('good') has its own irregular comparative, meilleur, which agrees in gender and number like any adjective: meilleur, meilleure, meilleurs, meilleures. Saying plus bon is a mistake native speakers will immediately notice. Hindi has exactly this same kind of irregularity: बेहतर doesn't derive from अच्छा at all — it's its own separate word, borrowed from Persian, the way meilleur is historically unrelated to bon. So the underlying idea, 'good' jumps to a totally different word rather than adding an ending, is one you already know from Hindi; you're just learning that French does it too.
bien (adverb) → mieux — a distinction French makes that Hindi doesn't
Elle chante mieux que moi. (She sings better than me.)
वह मुझसे बेहतर गाती है।
bien ('well', describing how an action is done) becomes mieux, not plus bien. Because it's an adverb, mieux never changes form regardless of gender or number — unlike meilleur, which agrees. Here's the twist for a Hindi speaker: Hindi uses the exact same word, बेहतर, for both 'a better cake' (describing a noun) and 'sings better' (describing a verb) — it doesn't force a second, separate word for the adverbial sense the way French does with mieux. Where French makes you actively choose between two different words depending on whether you're describing a noun or a verb, Hindi lets you reuse one word for both — meaning this is a genuinely new two-way split to build, not a mapping of anything Hindi already distinguishes.
mauvais (adjective) → pire or plus mauvais
C'est pire. / C'est plus mauvais. (It's worse.) — both acceptable
यह बुरा है / यह ज़्यादा बुरा है।
Unlike bon, mauvais ('bad') tolerates both an irregular form (pire, more common for abstract or serious situations) and the regular plus mauvais (more common for concrete things, like food or weather). Hindi generally sticks to one route for 'worse' — ज़्यादा बुरा (regular, 'more bad') — without a dedicated irregular word standing apart the way pire does, so this optional French irregular is worth learning as an extra layer with no Hindi shortcut to lean on.
Vocabulary
शब्दावली
- Hindi
- बेहतरbehtar
- English
- better (masc. singular)
- Hindi
- बेहतरbehtar
- English
- better (fem. singular)
- Hindi
- बेहतरbehtar
- English
- better (plural)
- Hindi
- बेहतरbehtar
- English
- better (adverb, invariable)
- Hindi
- सबसे अच्छाsabse acchā
- English
- the best (adjective)
- Hindi
- सबसे बेहतरsabse behtar
- English
- the best (adverb)
- Hindi
- बदतरbadtar
- English
- worse (irregular)
- Hindi
- ज़्यादा बुराzyādā burā
- English
- worse (regular alternative)