Questions & Answers about Kirja maksaa tasan kaksikymmentäyksi euroa.
Doesn't maksaa also mean "to pay"?
Yes! The verb maksaa means both "to cost" and "to pay". You can tell which meaning is used by looking at the subject. Since a book (kirja) can't pay for things, it must mean "The book costs". If the subject were a person, like Minä maksan, it would mean "I pay".
Why is kaksikymmentäyksi written as one giant word?
In Finnish, compound numbers up to 99 are always written together as a single word. If you break it down, it is just kaksi (two) + kymmentä (tens) + yksi (one).
Why is it euroa instead of just euro or the plural eurot?
Euroa is in the partitive case. In Finnish, whenever you use a number greater than one (like 21), the noun that follows it must be in the partitive singular form. To do this, you just add an -a or -ä to the end of the base word, turning euro into euroa.
What kind of word is tasan?
Tasan means "exactly" or "evenly". You will see it used a lot with prices, time, and measurements to show it is a perfectly round number. For example, if it is exactly two o'clock, you can say kello on tasan kaksi.