'Young' or 'Younger'

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 sixty years old.

The writer of the sentence could mean that his mother had a sweet singing voice when she was forty years old,

for example, or the writer could mean that his mother had a sweet singing voice when she was fifteen years old.

Both fifteen years old and forty years old are younger than sixty.

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?

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And that's Ask a Teacher.

I'm Gina Bennett.