Questions & Answers about Tämä vaate on halpa mutta hyvälaatuinen.
What exactly does vaate mean here? Is it “clothes” or “a piece of clothing”?
Vaate is singular and means “a piece of clothing / a garment.”
- vaate = one item of clothing, a garment
- vaatteet = clothes (plural), clothing items in general
So Tämä vaate is best understood as “this garment / this piece of clothing.” If you want the general “clothes” in plural, you would use vaatteet (see a later question on the plural sentence).
Where is the word “it” in this Finnish sentence? Why don’t we need it?
Finnish normally does not use a separate word for “it” in this kind of sentence.
- Tämä vaate on halpa mutta hyvälaatuinen.
Literally: “This garment is cheap but good-quality.”
The subject “this garment” is already expressed by Tämä vaate, so Finnish doesn’t add an extra pronoun like English does (“it is”). The verb on (“is”) simply links the subject to the adjectives.
Why are halpa and hyvälaatuinen in this form? Why no endings like halpaa or hyvälaatuista?
Here halpa and hyvälaatuinen are predicative adjectives describing the subject Tämä vaate.
In basic “X is Y” sentences:
- Singular subject in the nominative → adjective also usually in