Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Superlatives

Finnish has a reasonably regular structure for the generation of superlatives. You take the adjective X, and add -empi if it is more X, and -in if it is most X.

suuri - large
suurempi - larger
suurin - largest

pieni - small
pienempi - smaller
pienin - smallest

But is it always that regular? Firstly, one of the most common adjectives is almost totally irregular, so you just have to learn it. Here it is:

hyvä
- good
parempi - better
paras - best

Then you'll find that a lot of adjectives ending in vowels see the ending vowel change, for example:

paha - bad
pahempi - worse
pahin - worst

Here you loose the ending a on the "most bad" superlative. With the next example we see the first occurrence of the pesky "consonants change" rule - p becomes v:

halpa - cheap
halvempi - cheaper
halvin -cheapest

And with this one the end vowel isn't lost:

iso - big
isompi - bigger
isoin - biggest

So there isn't an easy catch-all rule for superlatives, but they're fairly regular. In fact, they're regularer than English superlatives. Or, to put it another way, Finnish is still ...

helppo - easy
helpompi - easier
helpoin - easiest