Breakdown of Joko politiikka tai strategia on huono.
olla
to be
tai
or
huono
bad
joko
either
politiikka
politics
strategia
strategy
Questions & Answers about Joko politiikka tai strategia on huono.
How do we handle verb agreement with joko ... tai when there are two subjects?
Even though there are two subjects (politiikka and strategia), the verb on remains in the singular. This is because joko ... tai (either ... or) presents them as separate, alternative choices rather than combining them into a plural group like ja (and) would.
I remember learning another word for 'or', vai. Could I say joko ... vai here?
No, you can never use vai with joko. Vai is strictly used in questions when asking the listener to choose between options. In statements like this one, you always use tai, and the fixed grammatical pair for 'either ... or' is joko ... tai.
Doesn't politiikka usually mean 'politics'?
Yes, but it also means 'policy'. Finnish doesn't use separate words for these two concepts. You have to rely on context to tell them apart. Here, because the word is paired with strategia (strategy), 'policy' makes the most sense.
Why is the adjective huono (bad) in the basic nominative case here instead of the partitive huonoa?
When describing abstract nouns, Finnish sometimes requires the partitive case. However, politiikka (when referring to a specific policy) and strategia are treated as distinct, countable items here rather than uncountable masses. Because of this, the descriptive adjective huono matches them in the basic nominative case.
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