"The best" or "the better"

[Yuri Yurinov]

Hello everybody,

While doing one of the tests written by Russian teacher I came across such sentences given in the key as "He is the best of the twins" and "Everybody plays chess, don't they?"
In my opinion in the first case we should say "He is the better of the twins" because we compare two people here and in the second one the "tag" should be "does he" or "does she". Am I right?
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[Alan]

Hi Yuri,

To be exact, when there are two subjects you need the comparative form as in: The better/worse/happier/easier of two and the superlative form as in: the best/worst/happiest/easiest of more than two.

As for the question tag after 'everybody' I would use 'they' because this is a suitable indefinite pronoun covering 'he' or 'she'.

Everybody knows that, don't they? is perfectly acceptable.

Alan
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[Yuri Yurinov]

Hi Alan,

Thank you very very much - with your help I can tell my colleagues that I was right about the first sentence. As for the second one I see that it is more convenient to say "do they" because it is difficult to guess who is this "everybody" - she or he.
Thank you once again.

With great respect (с большим уважением), as Russians so often write in their letters.

Yuri
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