Breakdown of Ylilääkäri kysyi, onko potilaalla ylipainoa.
olla
to be
kysyä
to ask
potilas
the patient
ylipaino
excess weight
ylilääkäri
chief physician
Questions & Answers about Ylilääkäri kysyi, onko potilaalla ylipainoa.
Both ylilääkäri and ylipainoa start with the prefix yli-. Does it mean the exact same thing in both words?
Not quite! The prefix yli- generally means "over" or "above", but its exact nuance depends on the context. In ylilääkäri (chief physician), it denotes rank or hierarchy—someone who is "over" other doctors in authority. In ylipaino (overweight), it denotes excess—having an amount of weight that is "over" the normal limit.
The English translation says "if the patient is overweight", but the Finnish sentence uses potilaalla (on the patient). Why?
In Finnish, being overweight is usually expressed as a possession rather than an adjective describing a state of being. The structure literally translates to "Does the patient have excess weight?". That's why we use the adessive case potilaalla (on the patient) combined with the verb olla (to be) in the third person singular.
Why is the word ylipaino in the partitive case (ylipainoa)?
In Finnish possessive structures (the "someone has something" construction), the thing being possessed must be in the partitive case if it is an uncountable mass noun or an abstract concept. Since excess weight (ylipaino) is an uncountable concept here, it takes the partitive ending -a.
How does onko work as the word for "if" in this sentence?
When forming an indirect yes/no question (like "asked if..."), Finnish doesn't use a separate conjunction for "if" or "whether" (never use jos for this!). Instead, you take the main verb of the question—in this case on (is)—and add the question suffix -ko. So, onko handles both the verb and the "whether" meaning simultaneously.
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