Choosing Which Case To Use, Part 2

12/4/2018

This is the second part of my answer to Meri's letter. Part one is here. Here's Meri's letter again:

Hi Mari,

I have some questions regarding the verb ostaa and the behavior of some nouns and the endings they take. Ostaako Peter bussilipun? Minä ostan maitoa/ jäätelöä. Assuming that the sentences are correct, which I think they are, why is it that with the same verb variations to the noun are possible? What is the difference? When do we know which variation to use? Here are my suggestions/ problems. I know that the partitive case is used for nouns that cannot be counted Maito is one such noun. You cannot count the milk, but the containers in which it is stored. However, as I see it, jäätelö can be counted, or am I wrong? One more thing. How do say that I want for example to buy tickets to a concert, for one, then the tickets to a particular concert? Would these be correct? Minä haluan ostaa lipput. Minä haluan ostaa lippuja. Thanks,

Hi Meri!

Why is it that with the same verb variations to the noun are possible? This is a question that one could write a doctoral thesis on, and actually, many have. I'll try my very best not to.

You already gave the short answer yourself: with a verb like ostaa 'to buy', we need to look at the thing that we're buying. If it's countable, we use the genetive, just like in your example: Ostaako Peter bussilipun.  If it's not countable, or in Finnish, an ainesana, then you use the partitive.

Ainesanas are things that you can't count: food, drink, elements and abstract things, like

vesi, tuli, rakkaus  'water, fire and love'.

Just like you said in your letter, ainesanas can be conceptualized as countables: instead of milk, which is an ainesana or uncountable, we can talk about cartons of milk and transform our milk into countable form:

Ostan maitoa. 'I'm buying milk'
Ostan maidon.  'I'm buying a carton of milk.'

The same goes for jäätelö, and any ainesana for that matter. From you're letter, I'm guessing that you're thinking about individual ice creams. Think of big batches of gelato instead, or tubs of Ben & Jerry's.

Ostan jäätelöä. 'I'm buying ice cream.'
Ostan jäätelön. 'I'm buying an ice cream.'

On a more general level, how do you choose the case?

When you're first starting to study Finnish, the way we use our 15 cases may seem completely random and very confusing, but there's actually a method behind what may at times seem like madness. It has everything to do with the action you're describing, or, the verb you're using.

Some verbs go strictly with one case, like tykätä 'to like'. Tykätä always goes with the elative case (Mistä?):

Minä tykkään sinusta.
Minä tykkää-n sinu-sta.

First there's the word minä 'I', in its nominative or basic form, then the verb tykätä 'to like' in the form that goes with minä, the first person singular: tykkään 'I like'. Then sinä 'you' in the elative form, sinusta. So literally: I like "from you", or my liking of you comes from the way you are. I like you.

Other verbs are more flexible, like the verb ostaa that we started off with. Ostaa is a transitive verb, a verb that typically takes an object: you always buy something, and what case you should use depends on the thing you're buying: ainesana or not? If you're not buying anything in particular, there's a whole different verb for that: shoppailla.

So, you might saying, it's another f***** learn it by heart situation isn't it???

Well, you're right, it is. On the other hand, it's also not - when you progress further, you'll start to grasp the underlying logic, and you'll start to see that verbs with similar meanings behave in the same way. For example, this thing about liking from may seem totally random at first, but when you learn more verbs you start seeing a pattern:

tykkään suklaasta
'I like chocolate.'
pidän suklaasta
'I like chocolate.' (pidän and tykkään are synonyms)
nautin suklaasta
'I enjoy chocolate.'
uneksin suklaasta
'I dream of chocolate.'

In my opinion, the trick in the beginning is learning slightly longer chunks of language. Instead of memorizing tykätä + elatiivi, use it in a a longer sentence or phrase and then memorize that. If you love chocolate like I do, it could be tykkään suklaasta.

Once you know how to say you like chocolate, you also know how to say you like other things:

tykkään suklaasta
tykkään kahvista
tykkään kesästä
tykkään Helsingistä (Helsinki : Helsingistä)
... and so on.

Tykkään mansikoista.

Meri

14/4/2018 11:30:16

Moi Mari!

First of all, let me thank you for your answer. It helps a lot.
I especially loved the part where " the liking of somebody comes from the way they are".

I think I understand how the verb ostaa works. What about these sentences?

Ostan yksi jäätelö. / maito.
Ostan kaksi jäätelöä. / maitoa.
If jäätelön is "an ice cream" can we use yksi jäätelö, too or it is not common?

About elatiiivi: to my understanding, the case not only means "from" , but also "about, of" and I understand clearly the "uneksin suklaasta" I dream about chocolate part. Another illustration of this usage would be with the verb puhua:
Tänään kurssilla puhuimme säästä suomeksi. Today we spoke about the weather in Finnish during the course. This usage doesn't need to be memorized, it is quite logical.
The usage with the verbs for like ( pidän, tykkään), however, must.

I have noticed, that these two verbs make nouns act differently, like ostaa.
What I mean is that the nouns change just before taking the ending, depending on whether they are countables or not. Am I correct?

Tykkään suklaasta, kahvista (ainesanat), but mansikoista ( as opposed to mansikasta) which is a countable.

One last question. It is quite amazing to me to realize that verbs, which are, let's say, close in meanings, ( at least to me) take different cases. With tykkään and pidän, "the liking comes from the way the person/ thing is), but how about the verb for love. Like and love are a step apart, but the verb rakastaa takes partitiivi, I think: Minä rakastan sinua? ( Not sinusta).

I am sorry to take so much of your time, but I really am curious about how things work.

Thanks,
M.

Mari Nikonen

14/4/2018 12:26:08

Hi Meri!

First of all, don't apologize for taking up my time, this type of discussion is exactly why I started this blog in the first place!

Ostan yhden jäätelön is the correct version, and you can absolutely say that. The nominative form is only used for the object in a couple of specific situations. It works just like in English: an ice cream or one ice cream, both are used and mean pretty much the same thing.

Yes, all cases have multiple meanings, just like English prepositions do. The elative is used to signify the topic as well as direction, like in your example, puhua säästä. Also, "blogi suomen kielestä", a blog about Finnish.

"I have noticed, that these two verbs make nouns act differently, like ostaa.
What I mean is that the nouns change just before taking the ending, depending on whether they are countables or not. Am I correct?

Tykkään suklaasta, kahvista (ainesanat), but mansikoista (as opposed to mansikasta) which is a countable."

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean here, can you explain a bit more?

Mansikka is also an ainesana, being food, so I could absolutely say "Tykkään mansikasta" as well. The plural is more frequent with fruit and berries because they often come in several distinct units, but at the core it's no different from other ainesanas. We might say "ostin oluita" 'I bought some beers (bottles of beer)' instead of "ostin olutta" 'I bought beer'. So it just depends on what you want to say in that specific context.

"It is quite amazing to me to realize that verbs, which are, let's say, close in meanings, ( at least to me) take different cases. With tykkään and pidän, "the liking comes from the way the person/ thing is), but how about the verb for love. Like and love are a step apart, but the verb rakastaa takes partitiivi, I think: Minä rakastan sinua? ( Not sinusta)."

Yup, this is the interesting bit, similar meanings taking on different cases. Rakastaa indeed takes the partitive, "minä rakastan sinua". For me at least, loving and liking feel like they're much further in meaning in Finnish than in English for precisely this reason - loving in Finnish, "rakastaa" is something that you actively do to another person, while liking is something that just happens on it's own. The same goes for thinking about something or someone in Finnish "ajattelen sinua" 'I'm thinking about you'.

rakastan sinua 'I love you'
ajattelen sinua 'I'm thinking about you'
katson sinua 'I'm looking at you'

See how the pattern begins to form, and how the English preposition choices may start to seem strange when you look at them from a Finnish perspective? In Finnish, loving, thinking and looking all take a grammatical object that is in the partitive, whereas their English couterparts take a bunch of different prepositions which may or not make sense at first.

Comments are closed.

Ask a Finnish Teacher

Choosing Which Case To Use, Part 2

Archives