Expressing “as ... as ...”

In the following presentation, “Adj” denotes any adjective, and “NP” denotes any noun phrase, i.e. a noun (or adjective used like a noun, or pronoun, or numeral) optionally preceded by one or more attributes.

Comparisons

A simple comparison of the form “as Adj as NP”, such as “as good as this”, is expressed in Finnish in two ways, depending on meaning:

• yhtä Adj kuin NP, e.g. yhtä hyvä kuin tämä (as good as this); this can be preceded by the strengthening adverb aivan or its more colloquial alternative ihan (just)
• Adj kuin NP, e.g. kaunis kuin kesäinen aamu (as beautiful as a summer morning); this is somewhat poetic and not meant to be an exact comparison

Restricted expressions

In an expression of the form “as ... as Adj”, the adjective expresses a constraint, a restriction, e.g. “as fast as possible”. In Finnish, the basic phrase pattern is:

• niin ... kuin Adj, with the adjective in the partitive, e.g. niin pian kuin mahdollista (as soon as possible), niin iso kuin välttämätöntä (as big as necessary)

A phrase with the restriction “as possible” can alternatively be expressed with the pattern mahdollisimman ..., e.g. mahdollisimman pian (as soon as possible). Despite these pos­si­bil­i­ties, the English abbreviation asap, read as written, is now common in some jargons.

For a phrase of the pattern “as Adj as possible”, e.g. “as small as possible”, there is yet another alternative, using the superlative of the adjective, e.g. pienin mahdollinen, see Superlative with constraint.