Questions & Answers about Hän ostaa viisi tomaattia ja kaksi banaania.
Why are the words tomaattia and banaania in a singular form even though the English translation says 'tomatoes' and 'bananas'?
How did the basic words tomaatti and banaani change to become partitive in this sentence?
Because both tomaatti and banaani end in a vowel, you create their partitive singular forms simply by adding an -a to the end of the dictionary word. This gives you tomaattia and banaania.
Why is the verb ostaa singular if multiple items are being bought?
The verb must match the subject of the sentence (the person doing the action), not the objects being acted upon. Since the subject here is hän (he/she, which is singular), the verb takes the matching third-person singular form ostaa.
Does hän only mean 'he'?
No, hän is a gender-neutral pronoun that means both 'he' and 'she'. We translated it as 'he buys' here, but without extra context from a wider story, it could just as easily mean 'she buys'.