Saying 'than': kuin and the Partitive of Comparison

Once you have a comparative, you need a way to name what you are comparing against — the English "than." Finnish has two constructions for it, and both are fully standard. One uses the little word kuin; the other drops kuin entirely and puts the compared thing in the partitive. Choosing between them is easy once you see the single rule that governs the case of the following word — and that rule is where nearly every learner error hides.

Option 1: kuin + the same case

The straightforward way is comparative + kuin + standard, where the standard (the thing you compare against) stands in the same case it would have on its own — for a subject, that means the nominative:

The logic mirrors English "taller than I am": kuin introduces a shortened clause, and the pronoun keeps the case it would carry as that clause's subject — nominative minä, sinä, hän. This is why *kuin minua (partitive) and *kuin minun (genitive) are both wrong here. After kuin, the pronoun is a subject, so it is nominative.

Option 2: the partitive of comparison (no kuin)

The second construction is more compact and very characteristically Finnish. Drop kuin altogether, and put the standard in the partitive — placed before the comparative:

Here minua is the partitive of minä. The word order is fixed the other way round from English: the partitive standard comes first, then the comparative adjective — minua pitempi, häntä nuorempi, tuota kalliimpi. It reads literally as "of-me taller," and it is the everyday, idiomatic phrasing you will hear constantly in speech.

The partitive forms of the personal pronouns are the ones you will reach for most: minua, sinua, häntä, meitä, teitä, heitä (see personal pronoun cases). Every one of these is a legitimate "than-me / than-you / than-him" once it precedes a comparative.

The rule that ties it together: does kuin appear or not?

Everything comes down to one flip. With kuin, the pronoun is a nominative subject; without kuin, it is a partitive standard:

The single most-missed subtlety is blending the two — keeping kuin but reaching for the partitive: *pidempi kuin minua. Pick a lane. If kuin is there, use the nominative; if you want the partitive, remove kuin.

A subtlety with kuin: match the counterpart's case

When kuin compares two things that are not subjects, the word after kuin copies the case of whatever it is being measured against in the sentence — not automatically the nominative. Compare an object comparison:

Here sinua and häntä are both partitive because rakastaa ("to love") takes a partitive object — kuin häntä matches the case of sinua, the thing it is compared with. Contrast the subject comparison Sinä olet nuorempi kuin hän, where both are nominative subjects. So "the same case as the counterpart" is the real rule; nominative is simply the most common counterpart.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Two standard ways to say "than": kuin + nominative (pidempi kuin minä) or the partitive of comparison with no kuin (minua pidempi).
• The partitive standard comes before the comparative: minua pidempi, tuota kalliimpi.
• Never mix them: *pidempi kuin minua and *pidempi kuin minun are both wrong.
• After kuin, the following word copies its counterpart's case — nominative for subjects (kuin hän), partitive for a partitive object (kuin häntä).
• kuin = "than / as"; kun = "when" — one letter apart, never interchangeable.