Breakdown of Tämä on myymälä, jossa omistaja palvelee asiakasta aina itse.
tämä
this
olla
to be
aina
always
omistaja
owner
asiakas
the customer
itse
self, oneself
joka
who / which (relative pronoun)
myymälä
shop (retail outlet)
palvella
to serve
Questions & Answers about Tämä on myymälä, jossa omistaja palvelee asiakasta aina itse.
Why do we use jossa for 'where' instead of a question word like missä?
jossa is a form of the relative pronoun joka (which/who/that). Here it has the inessive ending -ssa ('in'), literally meaning 'in which'. When you are connecting two clauses by referring back to a place (like myymälä), standard Finnish uses local cases of joka rather than missä, which is mostly used for asking actual questions.
Why does the word for customer (asiakas) end in -ta here?
Does the word itse specifically mean 'himself', or is it gender-neutral?
There is no gendered word for 'himself' or 'herself' in Finnish. The word itse simply means 'self' (and translates to 'myself', 'yourself', etc., depending on the sentence). Here it refers back to the owner (omistaja), emphasizing that the owner does the serving personally rather than having someone else do it.
Is the word for shop (myymälä) related to the verb 'to sell' (myydä)?
Yes! In Finnish, you can often create a word for a place by adding an ending like -la or -lä to a verb or a noun base. So myydä (to sell) is turned into myymälä (a place of selling, i.e., a shop).
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