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Questions & Answers about Ostan lohta torilta.
Why is the word for salmon in the partitive case (lohta) here?
Because you are buying an unspecified amount of it ("some salmon"), so it acts as an uncountable mass noun. If you were buying one whole, specific fish, you would use the accusative case and say Ostan lohen.
The dictionary form is lohi. How does it become lohta?
Lohi belongs to a specific, older group of Finnish words ending in -hi. To make the partitive form for these words, the final -i is dropped and -ta is added directly to the stem, giving us lohta.
Why do we use the ablative ending -lta for the market square (tori)?
The ending -lta means "from on top of" or "from an open area." Finnish consistently uses these external location cases for open, outdoor spaces like a market square (tori), a yard (piha), or a street (katu). You wouldn't use -sta ("from inside") unless you were physically walking out from inside an enclosed building.
Why is the pronoun for "I" (minä) left out of this sentence?
In standard written and spoken Finnish, the first-person ("I" and "we") and second-person ("you") pronouns are often dropped. The -n ending on the verb ostan already makes it perfectly clear who is doing the buying.