Pidän eniten ruoasta, joka on vähän suolainen ja sopivasti mausteinen.

I like best food that is a little salty and suitably spicy.

Breakdown of Pidän eniten ruoasta, joka on vähän suolainen ja sopivasti mausteinen.

• minä: I
• olla: to be
• ja: and
• ruoka: the food
• pitää: to like
• joka: that
• vähän: a little
• suolainen: salty
• eniten: best
• sopivasti: suitably
• mausteinen: spicy

Questions & Answers about Pidän eniten ruoasta, joka on vähän suolainen ja sopivasti mausteinen.

Why is ruoasta used instead of ruoka or ruoan? What does the -sta ending mean here?

Ruoasta is ruoka in the elative case (the “out of / from” case).

The verb pitää in the sense of “to like” always takes its object in the elative case:

• pitää jostakin = to like something
  
  • Pidän ruoasta. = I like food.
  • Pidätkö kahvista? = Do you like coffee?

So:

• ruoka = food (basic dictionary form, nominative)
• ruoan = of the food (genitive)
• ruoasta = from/out of the food → required by pitää when it means “like”

It is not about a literal “from food” meaning; it is just the fixed grammatical pattern of pitää.

What exactly does Pidän eniten mean? Is it “I like the most” or “I mostly like”?

Pidän eniten means “I like … the most / best.”

• Pidän = I like
• eniten = the most (superlative of paljon = much / a lot)

So the structure is:

• Pidän eniten ruoasta = I like food the most (compared to other things).

It does not mean “I mostly like food” (as in “usually, generally”). For “I mostly like food” you would more likely use something like:

• Pidän enimmäkseen ruoasta. = I mostly like food / I usually like food.

Here eniten is clearly a superlative of degree, not a frequency or generality adverb.

Can I change the word order, for example to Pidän ruoasta eniten? Does it change the meaning?

Yes, you can say both:

• Pidän eniten ruoasta.
• Pidän ruoasta eniten.

Both are grammatically correct and can both be translated as “I like food the most.”

The nuance is about focus:

• Pidän eniten ruoasta.

  • Common, neutral way to say “Of all things, food is what I like the most.”
  • The focus is slightly earlier in the sentence on eniten.

• Pidän ruoasta eniten.

  • Feels a bit more like you are contrasting food with other options just mentioned or implied:
  • “Of all these things, it’s food that I like the most.”

In many everyday contexts, they are interchangeable, and the difference is subtle. Word order in Finnish is flexible but used to highlight what is new or important information.

What is eniten grammatically? Is it an adjective, an adverb, or something else?

Eniten is an adverb, the superlative form of paljon (much, a lot):

• paljon = much, a lot
• enemmän = more
• eniten = most

As an adverb, it modifies the degree to which you like something:

• Pidän ruoasta paljon. = I like food a lot.
• Pidän ruoasta enemmän. = I like food more.
• Pidän ruoasta eniten. = I like food the most.

It does not change its form to agree with a noun; it always stays eniten.

What is joka doing in this sentence? Is it like “which” or “that” in English?

Yes, joka is a relative pronoun, similar to “which / that” in English. It introduces a relative clause that describes ruoasta:

• ruoasta, joka on vähän suolainen ja sopivasti mausteinen
  = food, which is a bit salty and suitably spicy

In this sentence:

• The main clause is Pidän eniten ruoasta.
• The relative clause is joka on vähän suolainen ja sopivasti mausteinen.

Grammatically, joka here is in the nominative because it is the subject of the relative clause (joka on…).

The form of joka changes with case, depending on its role in the relative clause (jota, jossa, josta, jne.), but here it is the simplest form.

Why is there a comma before joka? Do I always put a comma before joka?

The comma is there because joka starts a relative clause:

• Pidän eniten ruoasta, joka on vähän suolainen…

In Finnish, subordinate clauses (including relative clauses introduced by joka) are normally separated from the main clause with a comma.

So in almost all standard written Finnish, you put a comma before joka when it begins a clause like this.

There are some rare, more technical or tightly integrated cases where the comma might be dropped, but for a learner, it is a safe rule:

• If joka introduces a clause describing a noun, use a comma before it.

What does vähän mean here, and how is it different from words like hieman or pikkuisen?

In this sentence, vähän means “a little / a bit / slightly.”

• vähän suolainen = a little salty, slightly salty

Similar words:

• hieman suolainen = slightly salty (a bit more formal/neutral)
• pikkuisen suolainen = a little salty (more colloquial, often spoken)

All three can work here; the nuance is mostly style:

• vähän: very common, neutral, slightly informal, used everywhere.
• hieman: a bit more formal or careful-sounding, often in writing.
• pikkuisen: casual, spoken language.

Be careful not to confuse vähän suolainen with vähäsuolainen:

• vähän suolainen = tastes a bit salty.
• vähäsuolainen (compound adjective) = low-salt (intentionally with little salt, e.g. a diet product).

How does sopivasti mausteinen work? What does sopivasti modify, and how is that different from sopivan mausteinen?

Sopivasti mausteinen literally means “spiced/spicy to a suitable degree.”

• sopivasti = suitably, appropriately (adverb from sopiva = suitable)
• mausteinen = spicy, seasoned (adjective derived from mauste = spice)

Here, sopivasti is an adverb modifying the adjective mausteinen (or the whole quality “to be spicy”).

Comparison:

• sopivasti mausteinen

  • Focus on degree: spiced to just the right level, not too much, not too little.

• sopivan mausteinen

  • Grammatically: genitive adjective sopivan
    • mausteinen.
  • Very similar meaning in practice: “suitably spicy.”
  • Slightly more like “appropriately spicy,” more common in careful written style.

In everyday language, both are quite close in meaning. Sopivasti mausteinen sounds a bit more like you are evaluating the amount of spice from your personal point of view.

Why are suolainen and mausteinen in this basic form, without endings like -a or -sta? Shouldn’t they agree with ruoka/ruoasta in case?

Here, suolainen and mausteinen are predicative adjectives in the relative clause:

• joka on vähän suolainen ja sopivasti mausteinen
  = which is a little salty and suitably spicy

In Finnish, in “X on Y”–type sentences, the predicative (Y) is usually in nominative singular, not in the same case as the subject or object:

• Ruoka on suolainen. = The food is salty.
• Ruoka on hyvää. / Ruoka on hyvä. (both possible with slightly different nuances)

In your sentence, the subject of the clause is joka, and the adjectives describe its state via on, so they stay in their basic form:

• (joka) on suolainen
• (joka) on mausteinen

They do not follow the case of ruoasta in the main clause.

Could I say Pidän eniten ruoasta joka on vähän suolainen… without the comma, like in English “food that is a bit salty”?

In standard written Finnish, you should keep the comma:

• Pidän eniten ruoasta, joka on vähän suolainen ja sopivasti mausteinen.

Finnish punctuation rules are not identical to English. Even when English might sometimes omit a comma before “that,” Finnish typically still uses a comma to separate a relative clause starting with joka from the main clause.

So for correct, natural writing: always put the comma in this kind of sentence.

Could I say Tykkään eniten ruoasta instead of Pidän eniten ruoasta? Is there a difference?

Yes, you can say:

• Tykkään eniten ruoasta, joka on vähän suolainen ja sopivasti mausteinen.

The difference is mainly style and register:

• pitää jostakin

  • Neutral, works in both spoken and written Finnish.
  • Slightly more formal or standard.

• tykätä jostakin

  • Very common in spoken Finnish.
  • Slightly more colloquial, but also used in writing, especially informal texts.

Both verbs work the same way grammatically here: they both take jostakin (elative), so ruoasta stays the same.