astioilla

Astioilla is a Finnish linguistic term referring to the plural adessive form of the noun astia, meaning dish or tableware. The form astioilla translates roughly as “on the dishes” or “on the tableware” and is used to indicate location or association with multiple items in a set. It is part of the Finnic case system, where the adessive marks location or presence, and the plural form specifies more than one object.

In Finnish, astiat is the ordinary plural for dishes, while astioilla is the corresponding plural adessive. The single-item form would be astialla or astialla? depending on dialect and standard usage. Astioilla therefore appears most naturally in contexts that emphasize a collection of dishes or the use of tableware as a unit, such as inventories, catalogs, menus, or signage describing serving ware.

Usage notes:

- Astioilla is commonly found in formal or descriptive writing rather than everyday speech, where pöydällä (on the table) or astioista (from the dishes) might be more frequent.

- It can express both physical location (on the dishes) and instrumental sense (with the dishes) when describing activities involving multiple pieces of tableware.

See also: Finnish grammar, Adessive case, Finnish nouns, Plural forms.

References: not provided.

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