Breakdown of Kysyitkö joltakin asiakkaalta, miksi hänellä on hanskat kädessä ja hattu päässä?
olla
to be
hän
he / she
ja
and
kysyä
to ask
hattu
hat
miksi
why
pää
head
käsi
hand
asiakas
the customer
joku
somebody, someone
hanska
glove (colloquial)
Questions & Answers about Kysyitkö joltakin asiakkaalta, miksi hänellä on hanskat kädessä ja hattu päässä?
Why are kädessä and päässä in the inessive (-ssä) case when the English translation says he had the items "on"?
In Finnish, clothing items worn on extremities (like hands and feet) or the head use the inessive case, which normally translates to "in". You wear gloves "in the hand" (kädessä) and a hat "in the head" (päässä). For clothing worn on the main body or torso, you use the adessive case (päällä).
Why is it hanskat kädessä with the singular kädessä instead of the plural käsissä?
When talking about wearing matching items on paired body parts (like gloves on hands or shoes on feet), Finnish typically puts the body part in the singular. Saying hanskat kädessä is the natural idiomatic way to say "gloves on his hands".
Why is it joltakin asiakkaalta and not another case like partitive?
The verb kysyä (to ask) always takes the ablative case (-lta/-ltä) for the person being asked. You can think of it logically as asking for information from someone. Both the pronoun joku and the noun asiakas must decline into this case, becoming joltakin asiakkaalta.
In the phrase hänellä on hanskat, why is hanskat in the nominative case instead of the partitive?
In the Finnish "to have" structure (hänellä on...), the thing possessed is grammatically the subject of the sentence. Because gloves are countable and he has a specific, complete pair, hanskat is in the nominative plural. If it were an uncountable mass noun, it would be in the partitive.
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