Learn Hardcore Finnish: Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta kurssin lopussa. - The teacher asks us for feedback at the end of the course.

Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta.
= The teacher asks from us for feedback.
Opettaja pyytää sinulta apua.
= The teacher asks you (from you) for help.

So meiltä is used because of the verb pyytää (“to ask, to request”), which typically takes the person you ask from in the ablative.

Why is palautetta in the partitive case instead of palaute or palautteen?

Palautetta is the partitive singular of palaute (“feedback”).

Finnish often uses the partitive for:

An indefinite amount of something (like “some feedback”), especially when it’s not countable.
The object of verbs like pyytää, which often “want” the thing asked for in the partitive when it’s not a specific, limited object.

Compare:

Opettaja pyytää palautetta.
→ The teacher asks for (some) feedback. (general, indefinite amount)
Opettaja pyytää palautteen.
→ The teacher asks for the feedback. (a specific, delimited “whole”; sounds more like there is one defined feedback item that must be given)
Opettaja pyytää palauteen.
→ Incorrect form (this would try to be illative, but palaute doesn’t work that way here).

In normal usage, with the meaning “ask for feedback” in general, palautetta (partitive) is the natural choice.

How does pyytää work with its objects? Is there a pattern I can remember?

Yes. With pyytää, a very common pattern is:

pyytää + [person in ablative] + [thing in partitive]

So:

Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta.
= The teacher asks us (from us) for feedback.
Hän pyytää minulta anteeksi.
= He/She asks me for forgiveness.
Voinko pyytää sinulta apua?
= Can I ask you for help?

Structure breakdown:

person asked: ablative (minulta, sinulta, meiltä, teiltä, heiltä, opiskelijoilta…)
thing requested: usually partitive (apua, rahaa, neuvoja, palautetta...)

You can remember it as:

“pyytää joltakulta jotakin”
(to ask from someone for something)

Could I say Opettaja pyytää palautetta meiltä instead? Is that word order okay?

Yes, that word order is completely correct:

Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta.
Opettaja pyytää palautetta meiltä.

Both are grammatical and mean the same thing.

Word order in Finnish is relatively flexible, so you can move meiltä and palautetta around for emphasis or style. The most neutral is often considered:

Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta.

But putting palautetta earlier can emphasize what is being asked for a bit more:

Opettaja pyytää palautetta meiltä. = It’s feedback (not something else) that the teacher asks us for.

The change in nuance is small; in everyday speech both variants are natural.

What tense is pyytää here, and can it refer to the future?

Pyytää in this sentence is:

3rd person singular present tense: hän pyytää → “he/she asks / is asking”.

Finnish does not have a separate future tense. The present tense is used for:

actions happening now:
- Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta. (right now)
habitual actions:
- Opettaja pyytää aina meiltä palautetta kurssin lopussa. = The teacher always asks us for feedback at the end of the course.
future actions, when the context is future:
- Kurssi päättyy ensi viikolla. Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta kurssin lopussa.
  = The course ends next week. The teacher will ask us for feedback at the end of the course.

So here, depending on context, pyytää can be understood as “asks”, “is going to ask”, or “(usually) asks”.

What cases are kurssin and lopussa, and how do they work together to mean “at the end of the course”?

Structure:

kurssin = genitive singular of kurssi (“course”)
lopussa = inessive singular of loppu (“end”) → “in the end / at the end”

So literally:

kurssin lopussa = “in the end of the course” → “at the end of the course”

This is a very common Finnish pattern:

[X‑n] [Y‑ssA] = “in/at the Y of X”
e.g.
päivän lopussa = at the end of the day
vuoden alussa = at the beginning of the year
tunnin aikana (different case, but similar idea) = during the lesson

Here, kurssin is like a possessor: “the course’s end”, and lopussa tells you the location/time “in that end”.

Can I use other expressions instead of kurssin lopussa, like kurssin jälkeen?

Yes, there are several natural alternatives, with small nuance differences:

kurssin lopussa
- literally “in the end of the course” → at the (time) of the course’s ending
- focuses on the moment or phase that is the end.
kurssin jälkeen
- literally “after the course”
- focuses on after it’s finished, not during the course anymore.
- Ex: Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta kurssin jälkeen.
  = The teacher asks us for feedback after the course (maybe by email a day later).
kurssin lopuksi
- “as the final thing of the course / as a conclusion to the course”
- more like “as a last act, finally”.
kurssin päätyttyä
- “once the course has ended”
- more formal/structured, often in written language.

In everyday speech, kurssin lopussa and kurssin jälkeen are the most common. They’re both correct; choose based on whether you mean at the end vs after it.

Is there a difference between pyytää and kysyä in a sentence like this?

Yes, an important one:

pyytää = to request something, to ask someone to give you something or do something for you.
kysyä = to ask a question, to inquire.

So:

Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta.
= The teacher requests feedback from us (wants us to give it).
Opettaja kysyy meiltä kysymyksiä.
= The teacher asks us questions (asks us things like “What is…?”).

You would not normally say:

✗ Opettaja kysyy meiltä palautetta.
This sounds wrong/odd, because kysyä expects “questions / information” as its object, not “feedback” as something to hand over.

So for “ask for feedback, money, help, permission, etc.”, use pyytää. For “ask a question”, use kysyä.

What would Opettaja pyytää meitä mean? Is that correct Finnish?

Opettaja pyytää meitä is incomplete and sounds unnatural on its own.

Here meitä is the partitive object of pyytää, so the sentence is expecting what we are being asked to do:

Opettaja pyytää meitä tulemaan ajoissa.
= The teacher asks us to come on time.
Opettaja pyytää meitä olemaan hiljaa.
= The teacher asks us to be quiet.

So:

meiltä = from us (ablative) → used for asking us for something
meitä = us (partitive) → used for asking us to do something / asking us as an object

Your original sentence needs meiltä (“from us”), because the teacher is asking us for something (feedback).

How would the sentence change if there was only one student: “The teacher asks me for feedback at the end of the course”?

You mainly need to change meiltä (“from us”) to minulta (“from me”):

Opettaja pyytää minulta palautetta kurssin lopussa.
= The teacher asks me for feedback at the end of the course.

Pattern:

minulta = from me
sinulta = from you (singular)
meiltä = from us
teiltä = from you (plural)
heiltä = from them

Everything else in the sentence can stay the same.

Can you give a few more examples using pyytää [ablative] [partitive] like in this sentence?

Yes, here are some close parallels:

Esimies pyytää työntekijöiltä ehdotuksia.
= The manager asks the employees for suggestions.
Asiakas pyytää myyjältä alennusta.
= The customer asks the salesperson for a discount.
Lapsi pyytää äidiltään rahaa.
= The child asks (from) their mother for money.
Voinko pyytää sinulta neuvoja?
= Can I ask you for advice?

All follow the same pattern as:

Opettaja pyytää meiltä palautetta.

Person in ablative (-lta/-ltä), thing requested in partitive.