Breakdown of Nämä kengät ovat nahkaa, mutta nuo ovat muovia.
olla
to be
mutta
but
nämä
these
nuo
those (over there)
Questions & Answers about Nämä kengät ovat nahkaa, mutta nuo ovat muovia.
Why are nahkaa and muovia in the partitive case here?
In Finnish, when you state what material something consists of (like leather, plastic, wood, or glass) using the verb olla (to be), the material is put in the partitive case. You can think of it as saying the shoes are "some leather".
Since the shoes (kengät) are plural, why aren't the materials in the plural form too?
Substances like leather (nahka) and plastic (muovi) are uncountable mass nouns. Even though the shoes are plural, the material itself stays in the singular partitive because you are describing the overall substance, not countable individual pieces of leather.
How do nämä and nuo differ?
Both are plural words pointing to objects, but they depend on distance. Nämä means "these" (objects close to the speaker) and is the plural of tämä (this). Nuo means "those" (objects further away) and is the plural of tuo (that).
The current lesson is about the elative case. Could we use the elative here instead of the partitive to say what the shoes are made of?
Not with just the verb ovat (are). However, if you add a verb like tehty (made), you would use the elative case to say what they are made "out of". For example, Nämä kengät on tehty nahasta means "These shoes are made out of leather."