Better and Better

In last week's newsletter, we looked at the various ways of expressing the adverb "even" in German. We shouldn't forget that adverbs not only describe verbs, but adjectives as well. In this case, "even" is expressed with "noch":

Und mit ein bisschen Unterstützung der Teamkollegen klappt's vielleicht noch besser.

And with a little support from the team members it might work out even better.

Caption 11, Fußball - Torwandschießen
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In English we say something is "even better" or that it is getting "better and better." The latter exists in German as well and is often constructed with the verb werden, the word immer, and a comparative adjective.

Man wird ja immer besser durch die Übung.

One does get even [always] better through practice.

Caption 26, Singer-Songwriter - Sebastian Niklaus
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As you can see, this construction can be used with most adjectives:

Sie wird im Spiegel immer kleiner

It gets smaller and smaller in the mirror

Caption 85, Wincent Weiss & Benni Freibott - Musik sein
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Und deshalb wird es auch immer wichtiger werden,

And therefore it is going to become more and more important

dieses auch in Zukunft, äh, zu verstärken.

to, uh, also emphasize this in the future.

Captions 35-36, Angela Merkel - beim Nachhaltigkeitsrat
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Sie ist, äh, durch die Erweiterung des Flughafens

It has, uh, through the expansion of the airport,

natürlich immer komplexer geworden...

become more and more complex, of course...

Captions 35-36, Berlins regierender Bürgermeister - Pläne für 2014
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However, make sure to take context of the sentence and the presence or absence of werden into account. The sentence below shows that immer can be combined with an adjective and still just mean "always."