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Ravintolan sijasta käymme usein syömässä pikaruokaa.

Ravintolan sijasta käymme usein syömässä pikaruokaa.
Instead of a restaurant, we often go eat fast food.
From Lesson 429:Brief visits (käydä -massa)·Finnish

Questions & Answers about Ravintolan sijasta käymme usein syömässä pikaruokaa.

Why does the sentence use syömässä instead of the basic infinitive syödä?
The verb käydä (to visit / go and come back) requires the action you perform during the visit to be in the 3rd infinitive inessive, which ends in -massa or -mässä. In English, you might say 'go to eat', but Finnish structures this as 'visit in the act of eating' (käymme syömässä).
If I wanted to use the verb mennä (to go) instead of käydä, how would the sentence change?
If you replace käymme with menemme, the verb syödä must also change. Mennä requires the illative form (-maan or -mään), so the phrase would become menemme syömään. Remember that käydä implies a round trip (going and returning), while mennä focuses purely on the outward journey.
Why is the word for restaurant in the genitive case (ravintolan)?
It is governed by the word sijasta (instead of). Sijasta is a postposition, and like most postpositions in Finnish, it requires the noun immediately preceding it to be in the genitive case (-n).
Why is pikaruokaa in the partitive case rather than the accusative?
The word pikaruoka (fast food) is an uncountable mass noun. When talking about eating or drinking uncountable things, the object takes the partitive case to indicate you are eating 'some' fast food, rather than a single, complete, finite entity.

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