Charters also reports "the /hardest/ of the two" and "my brother and I measured and he was the /tallest/." I have frequently heard "it ain't so /worse/," but here a humorous effect seems to have been intended. Adjectives are made much less rapidly in American than either substantives or verbs. The only suffix that seems to be in general use for that purpose is /-y/, as in /tony/, /classy/, /daffy/, /nutty/, /dinky/, /leery/, etc. The use of the adjectival prefix /super-/ is confined to the more sophisticated classes; the plain people seem to be unaware of it.[71] This relative paucity of adjectives appears to be common to the more primitive varieties of speech. E. J. [Pg231] Hills, in his elaborate study of the vocabulary of a child of two,[72] found that it contained but 23 descriptive adjectives, of which six were the names of colors, as against 59 verbs and 173 common nouns. Moreover, most of the 23 minus six were adjectives of all work, such as /nasty/, /funny/ and /nice/. Colloquial American uses the same rubber-stamps of speech. /Funny/ connotes the whole range of the unusual; /hard/ indicates every shade of difficulty; /nice/ is everything satisfactory; /bully/ is a superlative of almost limitless scope. The decay of /one/ to a vague /n/-sound, as in /this'n/, is matched by a decay of /than/ after comparatives. /Earlier than/ is seldom if ever heard; composition reduces the two words to /earlier'n/. So with /better'n/, /faster'n/, /hotter'n/, /deader'n/, etc. Once I overheard the following dialogue: "I like a belt /more looser'n/ what this one is." "Well, then, why don't you unloosen it /more'n/ you got it unloosened?" § 7