Question 1

Why is the verb ei lievittäisi instead of just ei lievittää?

Accepted Answer

This is the conditional mood, which translates to "would not relieve". To form the negative conditional, you use the negative verb (ei) plus the verb stem with the conditional marker -isi. For lievittää (to relieve), the strong stem is lievittä-, giving us ei lievittäisi.

Question 2

Why is the object oiretta (the symptom) in the partitive case?

Accepted Answer

The most absolute rule here is that this is a negative sentence (ei lievittäisi). In Finnish, the object of a negative sentence must always be in the partitive case. However, even in a positive sentence, the verb lievittää usually takes a partitive object because alleviating pain or a symptom is treated as an ongoing, incomplete process. The base form of the word is oire, and words ending in -e take a -tta/-ttä partitive ending.

Question 3

How does the phrase yhtä hyvin kuin work?

Accepted Answer

This is a fixed comparative structure meaning "as well as" or "equally well as". You form it using yhtä (equally) followed by an adjective or adverb (in this case, the adverb hyvin, meaning "well"), and finishing with kuin (as/than).

Question 4

Could I say yhtä hyvä kuin instead of yhtä hyvin kuin?

Accepted Answer

Not in this sentence. You need the adverb hyvin (well) because you are describing how the pill performs the action of the verb (relieving the symptom). If you used the adjective hyvä (good), the phrase would mean "as good as" and would have to describe the noun directly, such as in the sentence "This pill is not as good as the herb" (Tämä pilleri ei ole yhtä hyvä kuin yrtti).

Tämä uusi pilleri ei lievittäisi oiretta yhtä hyvin kuin yrtti.

Breakdown of Tämä uusi pilleri ei lievittäisi oiretta yhtä hyvin kuin yrtti.

Questions & Answers about Tämä uusi pilleri ei lievittäisi oiretta yhtä hyvin kuin yrtti.

Learn Tämä uusi pilleri ei lievittäisi oiretta yhtä hyvin kuin yrtti and more in Finnish