Word
Vähävaraiset tarvitsevat enemmän tukea ja parempaa sosiaaliturvaa.
Meaning
The underprivileged need more support and better social security.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Vähävaraiset tarvitsevat enemmän tukea ja parempaa sosiaaliturvaa.
ja
and
tarvita
to need
parempi
better
enemmän
more (comparative of paljon)
Questions & Answers about Vähävaraiset tarvitsevat enemmän tukea ja parempaa sosiaaliturvaa.
How does the word vähävaraiset function here without a following noun like "ihmiset" (people)?
In Finnish, you can often use an adjective in the plural to represent a whole demographic group, acting entirely as a noun phrase head. Vähävarainen means "underprivileged" or "low-income", so the plural vähävaraiset translates directly to "the underprivileged" or "low-income people". This is the exact same structure used in words like nuoret (the youth) or työttömät (the unemployed).
What are the root words that make up the adjective vähävarainen?
It is a compound formed from vähä (little, few) and vara (resource, wealth, funds), followed by the common adjective-forming suffix -inen. Literally, it describes someone with few resources.
Why are tukea and sosiaaliturvaa in the partitive case? Doesn't the verb tarvita usually take a total object?
While tarvita (to need) takes a total object (genitive-looking accusative) for complete, countable things, abstract or uncountable nouns like support (tuki) and social security (sosiaaliturva) require the partitive. Additionally, the word enemmän (more) acts as a quantifier here, which also inherently forces the following noun into the partitive case.
Why is the word for "better" written as parempaa instead of parempi?