Breakdown of Lentokoneen moottori on isompi kuin auton moottori.
olla
to be
auto
car
iso
big
kuin
than / before (in 'ennen kuin') / like / as
lentokone
airplane
moottori
engine
Questions & Answers about Lentokoneen moottori on isompi kuin auton moottori.
How do we use kuin to express "than" here?
Kuin links the two things being compared. The phrase that follows kuin takes the same grammatical case as the thing it is compared to. Here, we are comparing the car's engine to lentokoneen moottori (which is the subject, in the nominative case). Therefore, auton moottori is also in the nominative case.
How is the comparative word isompi formed?
It is built from the adjective iso (big). To say "bigger" in Finnish, you add the comparative ending -mpi to the word's stem. Because iso ends in an o, the ending simply attaches to the base word without altering any letters.
Why do we use the genitive forms lentokoneen and auton here?
These words end in -n because they are in the genitive case, which shows possession or belonging, much like " 's " in English. So lentokoneen moottori literally translates to "the airplane's engine" and auton moottori translates to "the car's engine".
The word lentokoneen is a compound word. How do its parts change when we add the genitive ending?
Lentokone is made of lento (flight) and kone (machine). In Finnish compound words, only the final word takes the case ending. This is why we modify kone into koneen but leave the first part, lento, completely unchanged.
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