Breakdown of Moottoripyörän rengas on kalliimpi kuin pyörän rengas.
olla
to be
kallis
expensive
pyörä
bike
moottoripyörä
motorcycle
Questions & Answers about Moottoripyörän rengas on kalliimpi kuin pyörän rengas.
How do we use kuin to say "than" in this sentence?
The word kuin directly translates to "than". When you use it to compare two things, the second thing is generally in the same grammatical case as the first. Here, the motorcycle's tire and the bicycle's tire are both the subjects of the sentence, so the word rengas stays in its basic dictionary form both times.
How do we get the comparative form kalliimpi from the basic word for expensive (kallis)?
Words ending in -is like kallis drop the -s to find their stem, which is kalli-. Then, you add the comparative ending -impi to get kalliimpi (more expensive).
Why do the words for motorcycle and bicycle end with -n here?
The -n ending forms the genitive case, which shows ownership just like adding an apostrophe and 's' in English. So moottoripyörän means "motorcycle's" and pyörän means "bicycle's".
In English I could just say "more expensive than the bicycle's". Do I need to repeat rengas (tire) at the end in Finnish?
Yes, in Finnish it is much more natural to repeat the noun being compared. Dropping the second rengas and just saying kuin pyörän would sound incomplete to a Finnish speaker.