Comparatives

What is a comparative?
Comparatives in English tend to have an -er ending or use the word 'more' - Taller, Stronger, Higher, Lower.
She is taller than her sister.
He is better at football than his friend.
I am more confident than her.

Unfortunately Sindarin doesn't have a comparative prefix or suffix, so to translate a sentence like the ones above we need to use the preposition word athan to compare two things.

To translate the sentence 'A woman is more beautiful than an Elf' you need to first turn it into the Sindarin equivalent, which is either
Bess sâf vainas athan i vainas Edhel = A woman has beauty beyond the beauty of an Elf
or
Bess sâf vainas athan edhel = A woman has beauty beyond an Elf

Examples:
He is older than me = Sâf în athan i în nîn (He has years beyond my years)
I am happier today than yesterday = Sevin gell athan i 'ell awen gîr (I have joy beyond the joy I had yesterday)
The sea is colder than the river = I aear sâf ring athan i ring e-gelon (The sea has cold beyond the cold of the river)
The grass is greener here = I 'lae si sâf calen athan i 'lae ennas (The grass here has green beyond the grass there)

Superlatives

What is a superlative?
A superlative expresses the highest degree of quality of something, surpassing all others. If you wanted to pay a compliment to a craftsman, you could say he is 'the most skillful'.
Although in English superlatives can be negative as well as positive ('worst' from 'bad'), it is doubtful Ro-/Rau- can be used in this way. They come from the root RĀ/ARA “noble, high, royal” alongside a note that states "any one specimen is "good of its kind," excels, without necessarily implying that others are bad or marred".
Below are some examples in English, the superlative is on the right.

Great	Greatest
Good (at something)	Best (at something)
Very	Most
Short	Shortest
Beautiful	Most beautiful

To turn a Sindarin word, such as beren (brave/bold) into bravest/boldest, we do the following:
If the word starts with a vowel, apart from u we add Rau- to the front of the word, and then apply soft mutation to the word.
If the word starts with any other letter, including u we add Ro- to the front of the word, and then apply soft mutation.

Examples:
Ro+Beren (brave)  = Ro-veren (Bravest)
Ro+Bain (beautiful) = Ro-vain (Most beautiful)
Rau+Eden (new) = Rau-eden (Newest)
Ro+Faeg (mean, poor, bad) = Ro-faeg (Meanest, Baddest)