Learn Hardcore Finnish: Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun, vai vähemmän tarkka? - Is your instructor as precise as mine, or less precise?

Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun, vai vähemmän tarkka?

Is your instructor as precise as mine, or less precise?

Breakdown of Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun, vai vähemmän tarkka?

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Questions & Answers about Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun, vai vähemmän tarkka?

Why does the sentence start with Onko instead of just On?

Finnish yes–no questions are usually formed by:

Taking the normal statement word order, and
Adding the question clitic -ko/-kö to the first element.

The neutral statement would be:

Sinun ohjaajasi on yhtä tarkka kuin minun.
Your supervisor is as strict as mine.

To make it a yes–no question, Finnish typically puts the verb first and adds -ko:

Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun…?
Is your supervisor as strict as mine…?

So on (3rd person singular of olla, to be) + -ko = onko, and that is how you mark it as a question.

What exactly does the ending -ko in Onko do?

-ko / -kö is a question clitic. It:

Marks the sentence as a yes–no question (answerable by yes / no).
Attaches to the first word of the clause:
- Onko hän siellä? – Is he/she there?
- Tiedätkö sinä? – Do you know?
- Sinunkoko ohjaajasi on niin tarkka? – Is it really *your supervisor who is so strict? (here it’s attached to *sinun, adding emphasis).

In the given sentence, attaching -ko to on is the neutral, most common choice.

Why do we have both sinun and the possessive ending -si in ohjaajasi? Isn’t that like saying “your your supervisor”?

It looks like double possession, but in Finnish this is normal and not redundant.

sinun = your (2nd person singular in the genitive case)
ohjaajasi = ohjaaja (supervisor / instructor) + possessive suffix -si (your)

So sinun ohjaajasi literally is “your supervisor-of-yours”, but in Finnish that’s completely natural. You can think of it as:

sinun ohjaajasi = your supervisor (with some emphasis or clarity on who the “your” is).

The possessive suffix -si is the real grammatical marker of possession on the noun; the separate pronoun sinun is optional and used especially for emphasis or contrast.

Can I drop sinun or -si? For example, are these correct?

Onko ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun?
Onko sinun ohjaaja yhtä tarkka kuin minun?

These behave differently:

Onko ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun? – Correct and natural.
- You keep the possessive suffix -si, so “your” is still clearly marked.
- Dropping sinun is fine; the meaning remains “Is your supervisor as strict as mine?”
- This is actually a very common way to say it.
Onko sinun ohjaaja yhtä tarkka kuin minun? – Grammatically non‑standard / colloquial at best.
- In standard Finnish, when you have an explicit possessor (sinun, minun, etc.), the noun is expected to take the corresponding possessive suffix as well: sinun ohjaajasi, minun kirjani, etc.
- In spoken / informal Finnish, people often say sun ohjaaja, mun kirja (without the suffix), but that’s considered colloquial.

So in standard written Finnish, you can drop sinun but not the suffix -si:

Standard: (Sinun) ohjaajasi
Colloquial: sun ohjaaja

What case is sinun, and why is it in that case?

Sinun is the genitive form of sinä (you singular).

Personal pronouns in Finnish:

nominative: minä, sinä, hän, me, te, he
genitive: minun, sinun, hänen, meidän, teidän, heidän

When a noun is possessed by something, that possessor is usually in the genitive:

sinun ohjaajasi – your supervisor
opiskelijan kirja – the student’s book
ystävän auto – a friend’s car

So sinun must be genitive because it functions as the possessor of ohjaaja.

How is ohjaajasi formed exactly?

Breakdown of ohjaajasi:

ohjaaja = supervisor, instructor, coach, director
stem: ohjaaja-
add possessive suffix -si (your) directly to the stem:

ohjaaja + si → ohjaajasi

No extra case ending is needed here because the word is in the nominative singular (subject of the sentence). If you had a case, it would come after the possessive suffix:

ohjaaja
- -si
  - -lle → ohjaajallesi – to your supervisor
ohjaaja
- -ni
  - -sta → ohjaajastani – from my supervisor

Why is yhtä used here, and what does yhtä tarkka kuin mean grammatically?

Yhtä tarkka kuin is a standard pattern for equality comparison: “as X as …”

Structure:

yhtä = the partitive singular of yksi (one), used adverbially to mean equally / as.
tarkka = adjective in basic form (nominative singular).
kuin = “as / than” in comparative structures.

So:

yhtä + adjective + kuin = as + adjective + as

Examples:

yhtä pitkä kuin sinä – as tall as you
yhtä kallis kuin tämä – as expensive as this

In the sentence:

yhtä tarkka kuin minun = as strict/precise as mine (is).

The adjective tarkka matches the subject ohjaajasi; it stays uninflected (nominative) in this predicative role.

Why is tarkka not inflected in some case like tarkan or tarkkaa?

Here tarkka is a predicative adjective describing the subject ohjaajasi after the verb olla (to be). In these basic “X is Y” sentences:

If the subject is singular and countable, both the noun and predicate adjective are usually in nominative singular:
- Ohjaajasi on tarkka. – Your supervisor is strict.
- Opettaja on mukava. – The teacher is nice.

So in:

Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun…?

tarkka stays in nominative singular because it simply describes ohjaajasi. The word yhtä is in partitive, but tarkka itself is not.

You would see tarkkaa (partitive) for example in:

Hän on kovin tarkkaa rahasta. – He/she is very particular about money.
(different construction and meaning)

Why is kuin used here, and what’s the difference between kuin and kuten?

In comparisons, Finnish uses kuin:

yhtä tarkka kuin minä – as strict as I am
tarkempi kuin ennen – stricter than before

Kuin is the normal “as / than” in comparative structures.

Kuten also means roughly “as, like”, but it’s not the standard conjunction in these comparative patterns. Instead, kuten tends to introduce examples or ways of doing something:

Tee niin kuin sanon. – Do as I say.
Kuten näet, tämä on helppoa. – As you can see, this is easy.

So in equality comparison yhtä … kuin …, you should use kuin, not kuten.

Why is it only minun after kuin and not minun ohjaajani?

This is an example of ellipsis – leaving out repeated words that can be understood from context.

Fully explicit version:

Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun ohjaajani?

Since ohjaajasi is already mentioned, Finnish can omit the second ohjaajani and just leave the possessor minun:

… yhtä tarkka kuin minun.

Literally: as strict as my (one).

English does something very similar:

“Is your supervisor as strict as mine?”
(mine = my supervisor)

So minun here stands for minun ohjaajani.

Why do we use vai instead of tai in …kuin minun, vai vähemmän tarkka?

Both vai and tai translate as “or”, but they’re used in different contexts:

vai is used in questions when the speaker is offering exclusive alternatives—you’re choosing between A or B:
- Onko hän iloinen vai väsynyt? – Is he/she happy or tired?
tai is used in statements and in questions where the alternatives are not mutually exclusive:
- Voit ottaa teen tai kahvin. – You can take tea or coffee (or both in principle).

In a yes–no question like this, where you’re clearly contrasting two possibilities:

either as strict as mine,
or less strict,

Finnish uses vai:

Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun, vai vähemmän tarkka?

Using tai here would sound non‑standard or at least stylistically off.

Why is there a comma before vai, but not before kuin?

Punctuation reflects how the sentence is divided:

kuin here is part of a comparison phrase:
yhtä tarkka kuin minun is one continuous structure, so no comma is placed before kuin.
vai connects two larger alternatives:
1. (on) yhtä tarkka kuin minun
2. (on) vähemmän tarkka

These are almost like two clauses joined by or, so Finnish commonly uses a comma before vai in such cases:

Onko hän iloinen, vai väsynyt?
Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun, vai vähemmän tarkka?

In short: kuin sticks closely to the adjective it compares; vai separates alternative propositions, often with a comma.

Could we say “vai onko hän vähemmän tarkka?” instead of “vai vähemmän tarkka?”? Would that change the meaning?

Yes, you can say:

Onko sinun ohjaajasi yhtä tarkka kuin minun, vai onko hän vähemmän tarkka?

This is fully correct. The meaning is essentially the same:

First option: he/she is as strict as my supervisor
Second option: he/she is less strict

The difference is more about style and emphasis:

vai vähemmän tarkka? – shorter, more elliptical, sounds quite natural in speech and writing.
vai onko hän vähemmän tarkka? – a bit more explicit and formal; you repeat onko and add hän, making the second alternative a full clause.

Both are fine; the original just omits repeated words to avoid redundancy.

How does vähemmän tarkka work grammatically? Why not just tarkempi?

Finnish has two ways to express comparative ideas:

Synthetic comparative: adjective + -mpi
- tarkka → tarkempi – more strict / stricter
Analytic comparative with “less”: vähemmän + adjective
- vähemmän tarkka – less strict

They mean different things:

tarkempi – more strict (than something)
vähemmän tarkka – less strict (than something)

In your sentence, the contrast is:

yhtä tarkka kuin minun – as strict as mine
vähemmän tarkka – less strict (than mine)

So vähemmän tarkka is the natural choice to express “less strict”, not “more strict”.

Could the whole sentence be said more colloquially in spoken Finnish?

Yes. In everyday spoken Finnish, you’d often hear reductions of minun / sinun and dropping of possessive suffixes. A typical colloquial version might be:

Onko sun ohjaaja yhtä tarkka ku mun, vai vähemmän tarkka?

Changes:

sinun → sun, minun → mun (spoken genitives)
ohjaajasi → ohjaaja (suffix often dropped)
kuin → ku (shortened form in speech)

Grammar in standard Finnish is as in your original sentence, but it’s useful to recognize these colloquial patterns when listening to real-life Finnish.