Breakdown of Traktorin jarru on isompi kuin auton jarru.
olla
to be
auto
car
iso
big
kuin
than / like / as (also in "before …")
traktori
tractor
jarru
brake
Questions & Answers about Traktorin jarru on isompi kuin auton jarru.
How does kuin work in this sentence to compare the two brakes?
The word kuin means "than". It directly follows the comparative adjective (isompi) and introduces the second thing being compared (auton jarru). Notice that the noun phrases on both sides of kuin are in the same basic form (the nominative case).
Can I drop the second jarru and just say ...kuin auton to mean "than the car's"?
In English, you can simply say "bigger than the car's", but in Finnish, it is much more natural to repeat the noun and say kuin auton jarru. Dropping it and leaving just the possessive word auton on its own sounds incomplete to a Finnish speaker.
How is the comparative word isompi formed from iso (big)?
To make an adjective comparative (meaning "more" or "-er"), you find the word's stem and add the ending -mpi. For iso, the stem is just iso-, so it simply becomes isompi.
Why do the words for tractor and car have an -n at the end?
The -n ending is the genitive case, which shows possession. It works exactly like the English "'s". So traktori becomes traktorin (tractor's) and auto becomes auton (car's).
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