# ruoka on pöydässä



## akana

Hi, new to the forum here. Just finished reading most of the old threads and wanted to thank everyone for the excellent questions and well thought out answers. What an excellent resource! OK, suoraan asiaan...

"Ruoka on pöydässä," as I understand, is the idiomatic way of saying "Dinner's on the table!" 

What, then, does "ruoka on pöydällä" mean, or does it just sound bad? My understanding is that objects are "on" the table in Finnish as in English: "Sakset ovat pöydällä," whereas you sit "pöydässä" and "naarmu on pöydässä." However, this pattern doesn't seem to hold with food and drink. 

Similarly, what is the difference in meaning between these two sentences?
"Maito on pöydällä."
"Maito on pöydässä."

Kiitos etukäteen!


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## sakvaka

akana said:


> Hi, new to the forum here. Just finished reading most of the old threads...
> !



That must have been quite a work!

You're right, the prepositions are used differently about food and drink. _Maito on pöydällä_ would suggest that someone has spilt it on the table. But if it's nicely in the package, it's "pöydässä". Also, if someone as been messing with food, you could say "Ruoka on pöydällä" (the food is on the table, ie. not anymore in the pans and kettles).

And don't be surprised if people mess these up in actual usage!


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## akana

Thanks Sakvaka. So, are the two following sentences roughly synonymous, then?

"Maito on pöydällä."
and
"Pöydällä (ssä?) on maitoa."

Or would the latter not sound as "messy" as the former?


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## JukkaT

Both sentences mean same thing with a slight difference:

"Maito on pöydällä" = "The milk is on the table"
"Pöydällä on maitoa" = "There is milk on the table"

So neither one is messier than the other they just "give an answer to different question" (Where is the milk?/What's on the table?)


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## akana

So, just so I understand correctly:

Maito on pöydällä.
= The (spilt) milk is on the table.

Pöydällä on maitoa.
= There is some (spilt) milk on the table.

Can I assume that the llä ending always indicates some sort of spill with food and drink, even if, as Sakvaka suggests, some Finns might not use it correctly?


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## hui

sakvaka said:


> _Maito on pöydällä_ would suggest that someone has spilt it on the table.


 
I disagree. It simply means "milk is on the table". Maybe it is spilled, or maybe the milk carton is on the table.



sakvaka said:


> But if it's nicely in the package, it's "pöydässä".



Again, I disagree. It is: _maito on pöydällä.

Maito on pöydässä _means that the table is set for meal (or snack) and milk is "ready" on the table.


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## sakvaka

hui said:


> I disagree. It simply means "milk is on the table". Maybe it is spilled, or maybe the milk carton is on the table.
> 
> Again, I disagree. It is: _maito on pöydällä.
> 
> Maito on pöydässä _means that the table is set for meal (or snack) and milk is "ready" on the table.


 
Thanks for pointing that out, _maito_ can indeed also refer to the milk carton. I thought of it as a mass noun in my examples.

But I disagree on that "milk is on the table". Nominative case certainly refers to a definite amount here, and the sentence should rather read *the*_ milk is on the table_.


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## Giorgio Spizzi

Hi, everyone.
The minimal pair of sentences:
"Maito on pöydällä" and "Pöydällä on maitoa" brilliantly illustrates one of the ways in which a language lacking "definite" and "indefinite" articles can nonethelss manage to express them and enable speakers of other tongues to understand how to translate the different concepts into their own language. With a countable word, we would have: "Kirja on pöydällä" (The book... ...) and "Pöydällä on kirja" (... ... a book).
The first sentence would never be used to "announce" (ie "predicate") the existence of the milk on the table"; conversely, the second sentence would be appropriate to add new info on the "table", by saying that (among other things) there's milk on it. A slightly similar device is used in Japanese, where the Thematic element is characterized by the particle "wa" whereas the Rhematic element is signalled by the particle "ga". If we used Finnish words to explain the functioning of Japanese, we would have: Maito-WA on pöydällä" and "Maito-Ga on pöydällä"respectively, without any additional flip-flopping of elements.   
Best.
GS


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## Hakro

Giorgio Spizzi said:


> - - - A slightly similar device is used in Japanese, where the Thematic element is characterized by the particle "wa" whereas the Rhematic element is signalled by the particle "ga". If we used Finnish words to explain the functioning of Japanese, we would have: Maito-WA on pöydällä" and "Maito-Ga on pöydällä"respectively, without any additional flip-flopping of elements.


That's very interesting. Grazie, Giorgio!


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## Giorgio Spizzi

Prego, Hakro.
All the best.
GS


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## Gavril

sakvaka said:


> Thanks for pointing that out, _maito_ can indeed also refer to the milk carton. I thought of it as a mass noun in my examples.
> 
> But I disagree on that "milk is on the table". Nominative case certainly refers to a definite amount here, and the sentence should rather read *the*_ milk is on the table_.



I think what makes _maito _definite is its position in the sentence (before the verb _on _rather than after it), rather than the fact that it's in the nominative case. _Pöydällä on maito _has the nominative form _maito_, but it would mean, "There is a carton/glass of milk on the table", right?
(Giorgio Spizzi already implied what I'm saying in his post, but I wanted to make it a little more explicit.)


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## locutus

Gavril said:


> I think what makes _maito _definite is its position in the sentence (before the verb _on _rather than after it), rather than the fact that it's in the nominative case. _Pöydällä on maito _has the nominative form _maito_, but it would mean, "There is a carton/glass of milk on the table", right.



I think it depends on the sense you are trying to convey...whether you are discussing specific milk or some more general, non-specific milk in an uncountable sense.  Putting _maito_ before the verb would generally mean you are discussing some "specific" milk...putting _maito_ after that the statement is about some non-specific, non-countable milk...therefore you would expect _maitoa_._

Pöydällä on maito, _seems incomplete to me... but I think you could say this...but you would have to add something , though:

_Pöydällä on se maito josta puhuimme... _I think it is more about expected word order and emphasis than any hard grammar rules.


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## Gavril

locutus said:


> I think it depends on the sense you are trying to convey...whether you are discussing specific milk or some more general, non-specific milk in an uncountable sense.  Putting _maito_ before the verb would generally mean you are discussing some "specific" milk...putting _maito_ after that the statement is about some non-specific, non-countable milk...therefore you would expect _maitoa_.


I agree about "non-specific", but not about "non-countable". I think the problem is that _maito _is usually interpreted as a non-countable noun in any case. If we take a countable noun, like _kannu (maitoa) _"a jug (of milk)", then I see nothing wrong with the sentence,

_Pöydällä on kannu maitoa._ 
"There is a jug of milk on the table."

Here is a question for the Finnish speakers: if I were to go to a restaurant/cafe and say,

_Saisinko maidon?_

How would the waiter interpret my request? Would he think that I'm asking for a glass of milk, a carton of milk, etc.? Or, would he simply laugh at my bad Finnish?


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## Grumpy Old Man

Gavril said:


> Here is a question for the Finnish speakers: if I were to go to a restaurant/cafe and say,
> 
> _Saisinko maidon?_
> 
> How would the waiter interpret my request? Would he think that I'm asking for a glass of milk, a carton of milk, etc.? Or, would he simply laugh at my bad Finnish?


That wouldn't be bad Finnish at all! If a glass of milk is listed in the drinks menu, your request would be perfectly all right, and the waiter would bring you a glass of milk. We are not so particular and exact about these things. You could also say _Saisinko maitoa?_ and that would be just as good.

I don't know what the language police think about this, but I'm talking about actual, real usage.

GOM


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## Gavril

Grumpy Old Man said:


> That wouldn't be bad Finnish at all! If a glass of milk is listed in the drinks menu, your request would be perfectly all right, and the waiter would bring you a glass of milk. We are not so particular and exact about these things. You could also say _Saisinko maitoa?_ and that would be just as good.



I'm realizing that I chose a bad example for my question. If a certain type of food/drink is on the menu of a restaurant, it means that that restaurant has defined what a "unit" of that food/drink is. But this "unit" won't necessarily be recognized in a non-restaurant context.

How about this: if I said,

_Join maidon tällä aamulla.
_
Would it be interpreted as, "I drank a glass of milk this morning"? Or would it be unclear what unit of milk I'm referring to?


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## sakvaka

_Join maidon tänä aamuna_ would mean that you drank some specified amount of milk. The two primary interpretations that come to my mind are:

1) I drank all the milk that was left in the carton.
2) I drank the milk [that had been left on the table].

But if used independently, Finns will not understand that you are in fact referring to a whole carton. Even a small word like "yhden" will make it clearer:

_Join yhden maidon tänä aamuna._ I drank one [carton, either big or small] milk this morning.


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## Gavril

sakvaka said:


> _Join maidon tänä aamuna_ would mean that you drank some specified amount of milk. The two primary interpretations that come to my mind are:
> 
> 1) I drank all the milk that was left in the carton.
> 2) I drank the milk [that had been left on the table].
> 
> But if used independently, Finns will not understand that you are in fact referring to a whole carton. Even a small word like "yhden" will make it clearer:
> 
> _Join yhden maidon tänä aamuna._ I drank one [carton, either big or small] milk this morning.



Interesting -- as I recall, the noun _olut _has a different pattern:

_Join oluen päivällisen yhteydessä 
_"I drank a glass/bottle of beer at dinner."

You don't need the clarifying word _yhden_ in this case, correct?

I guess that there is more agreement on what a "unit" of beer is (a glass or a bottle), than there is on what a "unit" of milk is.


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## sakvaka

Correct. I'd say the total object rather refers to a bottle of beer in this context. The partial object would indicate an indefinite amount / glass.


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## locutus

Gavril said:


> Interesting -- as I recall, the noun _olut _has a different pattern:
> 
> _Join oluen päivällisen yhteydessä _
> "I drank a glass/bottle of beer at dinner."
> 
> You don't need the clarifying word _yhden_ in this case, correct?
> 
> I guess that there is more agreement on what a "unit" of beer is (a glass or a bottle), than there is on what a "unit" of milk is.


 
Good point.... I think some of these distinctions are more about cultural reference points than hard rules of grammar. Milk comes in variable amounts...beer usually in a bottle or a glass.... Something like that, I guess ... 

As I'm slowly learning Finnish, I'm noticing more and more things that seem "incomplete", but don't seem to following the correct grammatical conventions...eg. use of the partitive or whatever. The phrase or sentence may be telling you something but you may be expecting more and it may not be there. ..yet in some of these examples changing the word to, say the partitive, may then make it perfectly clear....or adding some additional commentary may make it clear why the nominative/accusative has been used.


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