Learn Finnish: Käymme hakemassa katuruokaa torilta. - We are going to get some street food from the market square.

Käymme hakemassa katuruokaa torilta.

We are going to get some street food from the market square.

Breakdown of Käymme hakemassa katuruokaa torilta.

to visit, to go (and come back)

katuruoka

street food

Questions & Answers about Käymme hakemassa katuruokaa torilta.

Why do we use the form hakemassa here instead of just the basic infinitive hakea?

The verb käydä requires the 3rd infinitive in its inessive form (-massa/-mässä) when you are talking about making a trip to do something. You can think of käymme hakemassa as literally 'we visit in the action of fetching'.

Could I say 'Menemme hakemaan' instead of 'Käymme hakemassa'?

Yes, but the meaning shifts slightly. Käydä implies a round trip where you go to the market square to get food and come right back. Mennä (to go) just focuses on the journey there. Notice also that mennä requires the illative form (hakemaan), while käydä requires the inessive (hakemassa).

Why is katuruokaa in the partitive case?

Because you are fetching an unspecified amount of an uncountable mass ('some street food'). If you were fetching a specific, entire, countable portion you had previously ordered, it would be in the accusative/genitive case, like haemme katuruoan.

Why does tori (market square) take the ablative ending -lta (from) instead of the elative -sta (out of)?

Open public spaces like a market square (tori), a yard (piha), or a street (katu) conventionally take the outer local cases. Since you are fetching the food from that open space, you use the ablative -lta rather than the elative -sta (which would imply coming out from inside an enclosed space).