Learn Finnish: Ruoassa on vähän suolaa. - There is a little salt in the food.

suolaa is in the partitive case. When you use a word that measures an amount, like vähän (a little), the noun that follows it must be in the partitive. Since the base word suola ends in a short vowel and its stem does not change, you form the partitive by simply adding another -a.

The basic dictionary word for food is ruoka. Why does it become ruoassa here? Where did the k go?

This is due to a rule called consonant gradation. When you add an ending that closes the syllable, like -ssa (meaning "in"), the k drops out completely. The stem changes from ruoka to ruoa-, giving us ruoassa.

Why does the sentence start with ruoassa rather than a word for "there is"?

Finnish does not have a direct translation for the English phrase "there is". To say that something exists in a location, Finnish puts the location first (ruoassa), then the verb on (is), and finally the thing that is there (vähän suolaa).

How do you pronounce the three vowels in a row in ruoassa?

You break the word into syllables like this: ruo-as-sa. The uo is a vowel pair that glides together in the first syllable, and the following a starts the second syllable.