Questions & Answers about Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä.
Word by word:
- asiakas = customer, client
- ostaa = buys / is buying (3rd person singular of the verb ostaa, to buy)
- ruokaa = food (in the partitive case; literally “some food / food (as an unspecified amount)”)
- meiltä = from us (ablative case of me, we/us)
So the whole sentence is essentially: Customer buys food from-us.
In natural English: The customer buys food from us or A customer buys food from us.
Ruokaa is the partitive singular of ruoka (food). Finnish uses the partitive case for objects in several common situations. Here, the main reason is:
- The amount of food is unspecified / partial / not “all of it”.
So:
- Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä.
→ The customer buys (some) food from us.
If you said:
- Asiakas ostaa ruoka.
this would be grammatically wrong in standard Finnish, because a total object of this type should normally be in the accusative/genitive (e.g. ruoan), not plain ruoka.
The partitive ruokaa is the natural choice when you’re talking about food as a non-count mass or an indefinite amount.
Ruoan is the genitive singular of ruoka, and in this kind of sentence it functions as a total object (often called “accusative” in simpler explanations):
- Asiakas ostaa ruoan meiltä.
→ The customer buys the food from us.
This suggests:
- a specific, known portion of food (e.g. a particular meal, the food you just mentioned), or
- that the action is understood as complete: the customer buys the food (all of it / the whole item), not just some indefinite amount.
Contrast:
- Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä.
→ some food, in general, non-specific amount - Asiakas ostaa ruoan meiltä.
→ the food, a particular portion / the one we have in mind
In everyday speech, ruokaa (partitive) is often more common when you just mean “food” in general.
Ruokaa is partitive singular.
- Nominative: ruoka (food)
- Genitive: ruoan
- Partitive: ruokaa
In this sentence, it is a partitive object of the verb ostaa. Finnish uses the partitive object for:
- Uncountable or mass nouns in an indefinite amount
- “Some” of something, not the whole thing
- Often for ongoing, habitual, or incomplete actions (aspectual use), though here the “indefinite amount” idea is the clearest.
Meiltä is the ablative case of the pronoun me (we/us).
Adessive / ablative / allative “on / from / to us” triplet is:
- meillä = on us / at our place (“at our house”, “with us”)
- meiltä = from us / from our place
- meille = to us / to our place
Here meiltä means:
- from us in the sense of from our shop / from our company / from our place.
So Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä literally has the sense: > The customer buys food from our place / from us.
The pronoun me (we/us) takes the regular “outer local” case endings:
- Base: me
- Adessive (-lla/-llä): meillä → at our place / with us
- Ablative (-lta/-ltä): meiltä → from our place / from us
- Allative (-lle): meille → to our place / to us
So me + -ltä → meiltä.
This is exactly the same pattern you would see with a noun like pöytä (table):
- pöydällä = on the table
- pöydältä = from the table
- pöydälle = onto the table
The verb ostaa is a type 1 verb. Its 3rd person singular present form happens to look the same as the basic dictionary form (infinitive):
- Infinitive: ostaa = to buy
- 3rd person singular: ostaa = he/she buys, the customer buys
The person is indicated by:
- the subject asiakas (customer)
- and the fact that 3rd person singular has no extra personal ending here.
Other forms of ostaa in the present tense:
- minä ostan = I buy
- sinä ostat = you buy
- hän ostaa = he/she buys
- me ostamme = we buy
- te ostatte = you (pl.) buy
- he ostavat = they buy
So there is conjugation; it just happens that the 3rd person singular looks like the infinitive for this verb type.
Yes, Finnish word order is fairly flexible, and both are grammatical:
- Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä.
- Asiakas ostaa meiltä ruokaa.
Both mean essentially: The customer buys food from us.
The difference is mostly about emphasis / information structure:
Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä.
→ Slightly more neutral; the focus can be on ruokaa (what is being bought), with meiltä simply adding “from us”.Asiakas ostaa meiltä ruokaa.
→ Places meiltä earlier, so it can slightly emphasize “from us” (not from someone else).
In many everyday contexts, they’re interchangeable; intonation and context carry most of the emphasis.
Finnish does not have a separate continuous/progressive tense like English is buying. The same present tense form is used:
- Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä.
Depending on context, this can mean:
- The customer buys food from us (in general / regularly).
- The customer is buying food from us (right now).
If you really want to stress that it’s happening right now, you add an adverb:
- Asiakas ostaa juuri nyt ruokaa meiltä.
→ The customer is buying food from us right now.
But grammatically, it is still just the present tense.
Yes, you can say:
- Asiakas ostaa meiltä.
This means something like:
- The customer buys from us (without specifying what).
This is natural if the context already makes it clear what is being bought (for example, you’re talking about your store’s usual products, or it has just been mentioned). Without context, it sounds a bit incomplete in the same way that English “The customer buys from us” sounds a little vague.
Ruokaa here is partitive singular of ruoka.
- Singular nominative: ruoka (food)
- Singular partitive: ruokaa (some food)
The plural of ruoka in the partitive is:
- ruokia = foods / different kinds of food / dishes
Example:
- Asiakas ostaa ruokia meiltä.
→ The customer buys (different) foods / dishes from us.
Typically:
- Use ruokaa when talking about “food” as a mass / uncountable thing.
- Use ruokia when you mean multiple items or types of food.
Finnish has no articles (no words like English a, an, the). Whether you translate asiakas as a customer or the customer depends entirely on context, not on any word in Finnish.
So:
- Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä.
can be:
- A customer buys food from us. (introducing an unspecified customer)
- The customer buys food from us. (talking about a specific customer everyone knows from context)
Finnish leaves the definiteness/indefiniteness to be understood from the situation or previous sentences.
Asiakas is the standard, neutral Finnish word for customer / client in most contexts:
- pankin asiakas = a bank’s customer
- ravintolan asiakas = restaurant customer
Klientti exists, borrowed from international vocabulary, but:
- it’s less common and can feel more specific or technical, for example in social services, law, or marketing jargon:
- terapiaklientti = therapy client
- asianajotoimiston klientti = law firm’s client
In your sentence, Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä, the natural and normal choice is definitely asiakas.
Yes, in casual spoken Finnish, people might:
Drop the final -i in asiakas (in some dialects/colloquial speech):
- Asiakas → asiakas often stays the same; sometimes you hear asiakas shortened in fast speech, but spelling usually remains standard.
Use ostaa in spoken contractions like ostaa → ostaa, but it typically stays the same in writing.
More likely, the whole sentence might be reshaped rather than just shortened:
- Meiltä asiakas ostaa ruokaa.
(Emphasis on meiltä – from us.)
Or, with a more informal subject like jengi (people) instead of asiakas:
- Jengi ostaa meiltä ruokaa.
→ People buy food from us.
However, Asiakas ostaa ruokaa meiltä is already very natural and neutral, suitable for both spoken and written standard Finnish.