Breakdown of Sellainen chili polttaa suuta kuin tulivuori.
suu
mouth
kuin
than / before (in 'ennen kuin') / like / as
sellainen
such, that kind of
chili
chili
Questions & Answers about Sellainen chili polttaa suuta kuin tulivuori.
Why use sellainen instead of tuollainen in this sentence? Both can mean "that kind of".
Sellainen usually refers to a general concept, an abstract idea, or something previously mentioned in a conversation. Tuollainen points to a physical object you can see further away right now, as if you were pointing at a chili across the table. If you were currently holding or eating the chili yourself, you would use tällainen to mean "this kind of".
Why is the object suuta in the partitive case?
The verb polttaa (to burn) takes a partitive object here because the burning is an ongoing physical sensation. The action is not "completed" in the sense of destroying the mouth. When talking about continuous feelings like pain, freezing, or burning, the affected body part is almost always in the partitive case.
Could we use the plural sellaiset chilit to talk about this type of chili in general?
Yes, but you would need to change the verb to the plural form: Sellaiset chilit polttavat suuta. However, Finnish frequently uses the singular form with words like sellainen to make general statements about a whole category or species of things, which sounds very natural here.
Tulivuori means "volcano", but what are the literal parts of this compound word?
It is made of two basic Finnish words that you likely already know at this level: tuli meaning "fire" and vuori meaning "mountain". So a volcano in Finnish is literally a "fire mountain".