Breakdown of Onhan tämä uusi laite yhtä edullinen ja kestävä kuin vanha?
tämä
this
olla
to be
ja
and
vanha
old
Questions & Answers about Onhan tämä uusi laite yhtä edullinen ja kestävä kuin vanha?
Does the word yhtä apply to both edullinen and kestävä?
Yes! When you have two adjectives connected by ja (and) in an equative comparison, you only need to use yhtä once before the first adjective. It works just like English: you can say "as affordable and durable as" without repeating the "as".
Why does the sentence start with Onhan instead of the usual question verb Onko?
Starting with Onko would make this a neutral, open question: "Is this new device...?" By using the verb on with the clitic -han (which often indicates shared knowledge or expectation) and adding a question mark, the speaker is seeking reassurance or confirmation. It perfectly captures the English feeling of "This new device is..., isn't it?" or "..., right?"
The English translation ends with "the old one". Why is there no Finnish word for "one" after vanha?
Finnish doesn't use a placeholder pronoun like "one" to refer back to a noun you just mentioned. You simply use the adjective vanha completely on its own, and the listener understands from the context that it means "the old device".
Why are the adjectives edullinen and kestävä in their basic nominative forms here?
They are describing laite (device), which is a singular, countable noun. If you were describing a mass noun or an uncountable concept (like weather, food, or abstract ideas), the adjectives in the comparison would need to be in the partitive case.