What’s up. I’m currently reading through a graded reader entitled 十分で読める物語. Right now I’m on a story called きてかぜのくれたテーブルかけ. To give some context leading up to the sentence, basically a young man lives an impoverished life with his mother, he goes out to grab some flour to make a small amount of bread with it, but a strong wind hits and blows it all away. Furious with the wind, he heads home and spots the home where the wind lives. He visits, asks for the flour back, wind dude has no idea what he’s talking about, but feeling bad for his situation gives him this magic cloth that creates food. Okay, cool. Right after he gives the young man the cloth, the wind tells him 「これなら、粉よりいいや。」 My best guess is that this is something like… “With this, you’ll have more than just flour.”. But, honestly, I’m not sure. Really, it’s the 「いいや」that trips me up.
より is a comparative. よりいい thus means ‘better than’. So it would mean: ‘this thing is better than flour.’
や is just a sentence ending particle. Not sure how to explain its function.
や is the plain copula in Kansai ben (same as だ）
Not in this case, as the plain copula usually doesn’t follow i-adjectives. I think this is more along the lines of よ and ね.
Ah, thank you so much. I was thrown off because the dictionary I use on my phone said いいや meant “not” or “nay”, something along those lines.
Yes, this is one possible meaning – an extended, stronger form of いや. That doesn’t fit in this context though.
What I read in 大辞林 was that it’s something like ‘saying lightly’, possibly even ‘irresponsibly’. I think it just makes the affirmation sound casual in this case.