'Young' or 'Younger'

Hello! This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from David in China.

Question

Hello,

My name is David, and I am from China.

Here comes a sentence "My mother had a sweet singing voice when she was younger". My question is that whether we can use "young" instead "younger" or not?

I am looking forward to receiving your reply.

Thank you very much.

David

Answer

Thank you for writing, David. This is a good question.

The short answer is yes. You can use "young" instead of "younger." But using "young" instead of "younger" does change the meaning of the sentence just a bit.

Let's look at the differences between the two choices.

"Young" and "younger" are both adjectives. Adjectives are words that describe nouns. "Younger" is a comparative adjective. Comparative adjectives are used to compare two people or things. Comparative adjectives are easy to recognize because they often have an "-er" ending. They are also often, but not always, followed by the conjunction "than."

Let's look again at David's original example sentence:

My mother had a sweet singing voice when she was younger.

In this situation, "younger" is describing "mother." But it is not so clear what is being compared. That is because we sometimes leave out information from a sentence. Even without the extra information, however, the listener or reader is still likely to understand the full thought or meaning.

As readers, we understand the full meaning of David's sentence to be: My mother had a sweet singing voice when she was younger than she is now.

We do not know how old the mother is now. But we know she had a sweet singing voice when she was younger than her current age.

Let's say, for example, that the writer's mother is 60 years old. The writer of the sentence could mean that his mother had a sweet singing voice when she was 40 years old, for example. Or the writer could mean that his mother had a sweet singing voice when she was 15 years old. Both 15 years old and 40 years old are younger than 60.

Now let's consider how the sentence's meaning might change if we were to use "young" instead of "younger." The sentence would be:

My mother had a sweet singing voice when she was young.

The meaning has changed just a bit. Now it is clear that the writer means his mother had a sweet singing voice when she was a young person, or in her youth.

We hope this explanation has helped you, David.

Do you have a question about American English? Send us an email at learningenglish@voanews.com.

And that's Ask a Teacher.

I'm Gena Bennett.

Gena Bennett wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.