What Is Actually in a Finnish Basket
You learned vihannes (vegetable) and hedelmä (fruit) as categories at L88, and omena, banaani and tomaatti long before that. These five words are the everyday contents of those categories.
| word | English | category |
|---|---|---|
| peruna | potato | vihannes |
| porkkana | carrot | vihannes |
| sitruuna | lemon | hedelmä |
| lohi | salmon | kala |
| kana | chicken | liha |
| The carrot is an orange vegetable. | Porkkana on oranssi vihannes. |
Peruna Is the Default
When a Finnish menu says a dish comes with something, the something is almost always peruna. It behaves like any -a word: perunaa in the partitive, perunoita in the partitive plural — the form you will use most, because you rarely buy one potato.
| I boil carrots and potatoes. | Keitän porkkanoita ja perunoita. |
Lohi and Kana
Lohi is the fish Finns eat, and it is a -hi word with the stem lohe-: lohta, lohen, lohella. Kana means both the live bird and the meat on the plate, exactly as English chicken does.
| Chicken is cheaper than salmon. | Kana on halvempaa kuin lohi. |
Sitruuna
Sitruuna is a loanword and keeps its shape: sitruunaa, sitruunan. It is the standard thing to put in tee, and its taste is the adjective you met at L140 — hapan.
| The lemon is sour. | Sitruuna on hapan. |
| I put lemon in the tea. | Laitan sitruunaa teehen. |
