In the lesson named “Fridge”, Duolingo introduces the partitive case. While Duolingo does take a fairly slow approach to adding grammar to their sentences, the sudden use of the partitive case will definitely confuse some learners. On your phone, you don’t have access to the “tips” for the lesson, so you are likely to get confused.

In this article, I go over the contents of the lesson named “Fridge“.  This lesson’s focus is on countable and uncountable foods and how they behave in different sentence types.

Fridge – Level 1 – Lesson 1

In the first lesson, the partitive case is introduced in relation to the words “some” and “any”. The foods in this section are mass nouns, i.e. uncountable nouns. This lesson is called “fridge”, so you could use these sentences in the kitchen.

An uncountable noun is something you generally eat some of, something you can’t count, such as ketsuppi (ketchup) and maito (milk). The words juusto and kala in this section can be both countable and uncountable. Generally we eat some cheese or fish rather than a whole cheese or fish.

Some remarks:

Fridge – Level 1 – Lesson 2

In lesson 2, we jump to complement sentences. A complement sentence (predikatiivilause) is a sentence consisting of a subject, followed by the verb olla, and completed with an adjective or a noun describing the subject. In this lesson, we’re learning how to express what something is like: is it orange, strange or sweet. These sentences all have adjectives as their complement.

This is not the first time Duolingo teaches you complement sentences. Earlier lessons have contained phrases like “Peruna on pyöreä” (the potato is round) and “Omena on punainen” (the apple is red).

This lesson, however, teaches you uncountable nouns, such as mehu (juice), kastike (dressing) and mämmi (a sweet rye dessert). When the subject of your sentence is uncountable, the complement (i.e. the word after the verb olla) will be inflected in the partitive case. So we will say “Omena on makea” but “Mehu on makeaa“.

Fridge – Level 1 – Lesson 3

While lesson 2 contained simple “subject + on + adjective” sentences, lesson 3 mixes things up and contains two types of sentences: possessive sentences and complement sentences.

For sentences expressing what someone has (#1), the object (at the end of the sentence) will be inflected in the partitive case when it is an uncountable noun. In complement sentences (#2), when the subject (at the beginning of the sentence) is an uncountable noun, the complement (at the end of the sentence) will be inflected in the partitive case.

Some remarks:

Fridge – Level 1 – Lesson 4 and 5

Lessons 4 and 5 don’t contain many new things: we mainly have more complement sentences (#1) and Minulla on -sentences (#2). We’re dealing with uncountable nouns here.

Some remarks:

Fridge – Level 2 – Lesson 1

The first lesson of the second level is a throwback to older lessons with countable nouns. Some of the sentences are just a brief respite before we return once again to the partitive case. However, a new sentence type is added here: locational sentences. You practice the words tässä (right here), täällä (over here), tuossa (right there) and tuolla (over there). In these sentences the food is seen as a concrete thing: we’re talking about the location of a specific thing. This is visible in the English sentence because we use the definite article “the”.

Some remarks:

Fridge – Level 2 – Lesson 2

After the throwback to the good old basic form in the previous lesson, we return to sentences with the partitive case. In addition to “minulla on” sentences (#1), we get examples of sentences with a pronoun as the subject (se, tämä, tuo) and an uncountable noun as the complement (#2).

These complement sentences are used to state or ask what a food stuff is. The question “Onko tuo ketsuppia?” can be used to ask what the condiment on top of your fries is, or what’s in the bottle in the fridge. The statement “Se on limonadia” can be a viable answer when someone is wondering what’s in your glass. We’re using the partitive case because these food stuffs are uncountable. We can count bottles of juice and liters of milk, but not multiple milks (at least not typically).

Fridge – Level 2 – Lesson 3

This lesson takes us back to complement sentences with an uncountable noun as the subject. In these sentences, the subject will appear in the basic form, while the adjective will be inflected in the partitive case.

Just as an interesting tidbit, it’s nice to compare the following two sentences, where the word order of complement sentences is especially clear.

Overview of all the sentence types in “Fridge”

The Fridge lesson in Duolingo deals with foods and introduces you to the concept of countable and uncountable nouns as well as how the partitive works in certain sentence types. Below, you can find a couple of examples from each type:

1. [Countable subject] + on + [an adjective in the basic form]
2. [Minulla on] + [uncountable object in the partitive case]
3. [Uncountable subject] + on + [an adjective in the partitive case]
4. [Location] + on + [uncountable subject in the basic form]
5. [A measurement] + [uncountable noun in the partitive case]
6. Sentences identifying the identity of an uncountable food

Slowly but surely, Duolingo starts mixing sentences which require the basic form and the partitive case. I think they do a pretty good job at keeping each lesson focused on one or two things only.

This lesson is definitely not the only one which includes important partitive sentences. It is, however, where this article ends. I plan on continuing this series and discuss where and how Duolingo introduces other uses of the partitive and the inflection of words in the case. Let me know if you liked this article!

Related posts:

Ainesanat – Uncountable Mass Nouns – Finnish Object and Complement Complications with Finnish Mass Nouns – Object and Complement Plural Partitive of Long Words Duolingo: Haarukka on tuossa. Tässä on sininen kukka.