Breakdown of Ostan vanhan pyörän, koska se maksaa vain kaksikymmentäviisi euroa.
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
vanha
old
koska
because
maksaa
to cost
pyörä
bike
ostaa
to buy
vain
only
euro
euro
kaksikymmentäviisi
twenty-five
Questions & Answers about Ostan vanhan pyörän, koska se maksaa vain kaksikymmentäviisi euroa.
How do you build a big number like kaksikymmentäviisi?
Finnish numbers from 21 to 99 are built by stacking words together into one long word. Kaksikymmentäviisi is literally "two-tens-five". Kaksi means two, kymmentä is the partitive form of ten (meaning "tens"), and viisi is five.
Why is the word for euro written as euroa?
In Finnish, any number greater than one requires the following noun to be in the partitive case. So, "one euro" is yksi euro, but because we have twenty-five of them here, it takes the partitive ending "-a" to become euroa.
Why do the words for "old bicycle" end in "-n" (vanhan pyörän)?
They are the object of the sentence (the thing being bought). Because you are buying the whole bicycle, it takes the "-n" ending, which marks a total object. Adjectives always have to match the noun they describe, so vanha (old) also gets the "-n" ending.
Wait, doesn't the verb maksaa mean "to pay"?
Yes, it does! The verb maksaa is a handy word that means both "to pay" and "to cost". You can tell which one it is from the context. Here, the subject is se (it, referring to the bicycle), so it makes sense that the bicycle costs money, rather than pays money.
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