Learn Finnish: Tämä koira on vuohta fiksumpi. - This dog is smarter than the goat.

This sentence uses a special comparative structure. Instead of using kuin (than) with the basic nominative form (fiksumpi kuin vuohi), it completely drops kuin and puts the thing being compared against into the partitive case (vuohta).

Why is vuohta placed before fiksumpi?

When you use this partitive comparison structure, the word in the partitive case (vuohta) usually goes right before the comparative adjective (fiksumpi). If you used the standard kuin structure, the order would be the other way around: fiksumpi kuin vuohi.

Why is the partitive of vuohi (goat) vuohta?

Vuohi belongs to a small group of older Finnish words ending in -hi. To form the partitive singular for these specific words, the -hi is replaced with -hta (or -htä). Another common example you might have seen is lohi (salmon), which becomes lohta.

Just as a refresher, how do you form comparatives like fiksumpi?