Learn Finnish: Ystäväni saattaa ottaa palan lakritsia. - My friend might take a piece of licorice.

Even though licorice is a mass noun, the actual grammatical object receiving the action here is pala (a piece). Because the friend might take one whole, countable unit, the action is considered complete and requires the genitive object case (palan).

Why does lakritsia take the partitive case here?

It acts as a substance modifier for palan. In Finnish, when you have a quantity, measure, or container (like a piece, a cup, or a kilo) followed by a mass noun, that mass noun must be in the partitive case. So, palan lakritsia literally means a piece of licorice.

Is ystäväni in the nominative or genitive case here?

In this specific sentence, it is in the nominative case acting as the regular subject for the verb saattaa. However, because the genitive marker -n drops out when a possessive suffix like -ni is added, the nominative and genitive forms of ystäväni look exactly the same.

How would this sentence look if we used the tekee mieli (feels like) structure from this lesson?