Mä söis ainakin koko pizzan.

Breakdown of Mä söis ainakin koko pizzan.

minä
I
syödä
to eat
koko
whole
pizza
pizza
ainakin
at least

Questions & Answers about Mä söis ainakin koko pizzan.

Why is it söis instead of söisin?
In spoken Finnish (puhekieli), the conditional marker -isi- is often shortened to -is, and the personal ending (like the -n for 'I') is dropped. Because the pronoun is explicitly used, the listener knows who is doing the eating, making the personal ending unnecessary.
Why is it pizzan and not pizzaa? Isn't eating usually a partitive action?
You use the partitive (like pizzaa) when you are eating an unspecified amount or an ongoing portion. However, the word koko (whole) tells us the action is complete and bounded—you are eating the entire thing. Therefore, the object takes the genitive-like accusative -n ending to show it is a total object.
Since pizzan has an -n ending, why doesn't koko take an ending too?
The word koko (meaning 'whole' or 'entire') is a special adjective in Finnish that never changes its form. It is indeclinable, meaning it stays exactly as koko regardless of the case of the noun it describes.
How does ainakin translate to 'at least'? Does it come from the word aina?
Yes! It is built from aina (always) plus the suffix -kin (also/even). While its literal parts translate to 'always also', as a fixed vocabulary word ainakin simply means 'at least' in English.

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