Similar things compare ‘to’ but contrast ‘with’

What you need to know:

  • This was the crime against language that a Nairobi politician committed the other day, when a newspaper quoted him as saying that “...President Kenyatta is a baby COMPARED TO former President Moi...”
  • If Mr Aden Duale has never learned how to control his tongue, his is IN COMPARISON TO Mr Sonko Mbuvi’s behaviour. But it is IN COMPARISON WITH the way President Kenyatta always comports himself.

The English verb “to COMPARE” is composed of the Latin preposition CON or COM (which means “with” or “together with”) and the Latin adjective PAR (which means “EQUAL”).

To COMPARE, then, is to bring together two or more (real or ideal) items in order to measure either their resemblances or their differences.

This gives most East African users of English a great deal of trouble. The confusion stems, I think, from the widespread assumption that a COMPARISON is always a negation.

To begin with, what preposition should the verb “to COMPARE” take? The answer: It depends on what the speaker or writer is COMPARING.

Is it necessarily a DIFFERENCE, a CONTRAST, a DISSIMILARITY? Why mayn’t any act of COMPARING also reveal a LIKENESS, a SIMILARITY, even an IDENTITY? English grammar books are very clear on that question.

It is that, whenever you are expressing a likeness or SIMILARITY between any two real or ideal items, the verb “to COMPARE” takes the preposition “TO”.

Examples abound. Here is one that every reader can affirm: Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta, Jakaya Kikwete and Yoweri Museveni belong to more or less the same age. In other words, you can COMPARE THEIR AGES TO one another. But whenever you are expressing a contrast, the verb to COMPARE takes the preposition “WITH”.

Let us make this absolutely clear. Because former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi is so much older than Messrs Kenyatta, Kikwete and Museveni, you must say that Mr Moi’s age COMPARES WITH theirs. In other words, only SIMILAR things or ideas COMPARE TO one another and only DISSIMILAR ones COMPARE WITH one another.

CRIME AGAINST LANGUAGE

This was the crime against language that a Nairobi politician committed the other day, when a newspaper quoted him as saying that “...President Kenyatta is a baby COMPARED TO former President Moi...” No, in such a generational context, President Kenyatta (junior) and Mr Moi stand in such a stark contrast that they can COMPARE only WITH each other, never TO each other.

Let us generalise this. The verb “to COMPARE” takes the preposition “TO” whenever it expresses a likeness or similarity between the two items or ideas being COMPARED; whereas it takes the preposition “WITH” whenever it expresses a dissimilarity or difference between such items, whether real or only ideal.

The same rule goes for the noun “COMPARISON”. Whereas the phrase “IN COMPARISON TO” expresses a likeness, the phrase “IN COMPARISON WITH” expresses a contrast or difference.

If Mr Aden Duale has never learned how to control his tongue, his is IN COMPARISON TO Mr Sonko Mbuvi’s behaviour. But it is IN COMPARISON WITH the way President Kenyatta always comports himself.

Do remember, too, that the “PAR” element in the word “COMPARE” stems from the same Latin word that has given us the noun PARITY (meaning “equality”).

To COMPARE two items, then, is to bring out the qualities common to them that may be “EQUAL” both in similarity and in contrast. That is why the American phrase “EQUAL PARITY” is tautological nonsense.