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Minä jätän ruoan lautaselle.

Minä jätän ruoan lautaselle.
I leave the food on the plate.
From Lesson 50:Onto and to someone (-lle)·Finnish

Questions & Answers about Minä jätän ruoan lautaselle.

English says I leave the food ON the plate, so why use the -lle (onto) ending here instead of -lla (on)?
In Finnish, the verb jättää (to leave) is thought of as an action that moves something to a destination! You are leaving the food onto the plate. Because of this, you use the allative ending -lle (onto) rather than the adessive ending -lla (on).
How do we get lautaselle from the dictionary word lautanen (plate)?
For Finnish words that end in -nen, the -nen part changes to -se- before you add grammatical endings. So lautanen becomes the stem lautase-, and then you add the -lle ending to get lautaselle.
Why is the word for food written as ruoan instead of its basic form ruoka?
Because the food is the object of the sentence (the thing being left), it takes the -n object ending. Adding this ending triggers a consonant change inside the word where the strong k disappears, transforming ruoka into ruoan.
Could I leave out minä and just say Jätän ruoan lautaselle?
Yes, you can completely drop minä. The -n ending on the verb jätän already makes it clear that I am doing the leaving. Including minä just adds a bit of emphasis.

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