Breakdown of Mä ostais tän, jos se ois yhtä kestävä kuin toi merkki.
tämä
this
olla
to be
tuo
that
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
minä
I
ostaa
to buy
jos
if
kuin
than / before (in 'ennen kuin') / like / as
merkki
brand
yhtä
equally / as
kestävä
durable
Questions & Answers about Mä ostais tän, jos se ois yhtä kestävä kuin toi merkki.
How does the equative comparison yhtä ... kuin work here?
It means "as [quality] as". The word yhtä acts as the first "as", and kuin acts as the second. The adjective kestävä (durable) stays in its basic nominative form because it describes a singular, countable subject, se (it).
Why do the conditional verbs ostais and ois look like they are missing letters?
This sentence is written in spoken Finnish. In standard written Finnish, these would be ostaisin (I would buy) and olisi (it would be). Spoken Finnish often drops the personal ending for the first person, making ostaisin into ostais, and shortens olisi to ois.
I don't recognize the words tän and toi. What are they?
They are common spoken Finnish forms of demonstrative pronouns. The word tän is short for tämän (this, in the object case), and toi is short for tuo (that).
Why does the object tän have the -n ending instead of being in the partitive case?
The verb ostaa (to buy) implies a completed action where you buy the entire item. This requires a total object, which takes the -n ending. So, the spoken word tän corresponds to the standard total object tämän.
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