# suolaa



## Moosmutzie

Hi everybody,

I have a grammatical question. In a list of ingredients on a food label I found the following enumeration:

"Ainkeset: suolaa, sokeria,   oliiviölijyä..."
I suppose that the "a/ä" ending indicates partitive case (please correct me if I'm mistaken). Can anyboy confirm that it is ok to use partitive for an enumeration such as a list of ingredients or is it necessary to use nominative?

Thanks in advance for your contributions.


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## sakvaka

The nominative case singular is used in those kind of lists.

_Ainekset: vehnäjauho, kasvirasva, sokeri, vesi, hedelmäsokeri, rusina _(*no plural here!*)_, suola, sokeri, oliiviöljy..._


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## Moosmutzie

Hello sakvaka,

thanks for your post. Would you say it's completely wrong to use the partitive here? Do you think it necessarily has to be corrected?


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## sakvaka

Nominative is generally used for all food products in Finland. It isn't _completely_ wrong - we would understand the meaning even if it were in elative case, but it looks somewhat strange and different from what we've used to.

If you were telling us a recipe, then the partitive would be fine.


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## Moosmutzie

I see. Thanks for your help! I will adapt it to the nominative...


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## SamiFrenezas

It doesn't seem strange to me at all to use the partitive case here. In fact, I think I've seen it used in these kind of lists, too. But it might be, though, that it's more common in colloquial use. I mean, I would definitively not use the nominative case in spoken language.


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## sakvaka

SamiFrenezas said:


> It doesn't seem strange to me at all to use the partitive case here. In fact, I think I've seen it used in these kind of lists, too. But it might be, though, that it's more common in colloquial use. I mean, I would definitively not use the nominative case in spoken language.



Neither would I.

But I checked through all the food packages that I currently have and noticed that they all use the nominative. Other kinds of structures would seem outlandish here, at least to me. _Ainekset: maitoa, vehnäjauhoja..._ sounds more like a friendly recipe than an official list of ingredients.


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## Encolpius

Hello, so how would you say this in Finnish: 

How much for the eggs?

1/ Kuinka paljon muna maksaa?
2/ Kuinka paljon munat maksavat?

Thanks


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## sakvaka

Number two, this isn't a list of ingredients.  Besides, just as in German, _muna_ can refer to THAT part of a man...


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