I want bread would translate to haluan leipää.

But I want shoes translates to haluan kengät, not haluan kenkää?

It's the same as in English.

Haluan leipää = I want bread
Haluan leivän = I want the/a bread

"I want bread" says you want some amount of bread, meaning you are not specifying how much. Maybe it's one bite, maybe it's three loaves of bread. You are not specifying. In Finnish this is "haluan leipää".

"I want a bread" means you want one bread. Not half a bread, not one bite of a bread, not three breads. You want precisely one bread. In Finnish this is "haluan leivän".

Same is with shoes.
I want shoe = Haluan kenkää.
You can say so, but it means you somehow don't really want to have a shoe or a pair of shoes, or any other specific number of shoes, but just... "I want shoe".
It sounds kind of very sexual. (And kinky!) It sounds like saying "I want dick" or "I want pussy", but with "shoe" instead of "dick" or "pussy". Or alternatively, that you want to eat some amount of shoes because you find shoes tasty.

So: Yes, if you want shoe as a material, not as an object to wear, you can definitely say "haluan kenkää". In the same situationse where you can say "I want shoe" in English. It's a very rare thing you'd be in a situation where you need that phrase either in Finnish or in English, but it is a grammatically correct phrase for a very specific kind of an occassion!

Haluta may not have been the best verb for the example, but it was a verb with which I am familiar.

I came up with a couple example while riding my scooter and could not type and they escape me now.

I guess my confusion comes in that so far in all my lessons making something plural before the verb is done by -t and after the verb -a/-ä.

Everytime I start to think I have a grasp on Finnish a wrench flies out of no where and changes things. Not that English is any different.

Kiitos.

"Kengät" also works for bread. "Haluan leivät".

This form is for when you are talking about a set of something. And shoes come in sets of two.

Hence "kengät" not "kenkää".

And if you prepare a bunch of sandwiches, you might say "haluan leivät" when talking about the set you prepared.

Like the other commenter said, the english equivalent of "haluan kenkää" is "I want shoe". "Haluan kengät" is used when meaning "I want a pair of shoes".

"Kenkää" is also used to mean "fired". As in getting kicked.

Palun palun :)

I guess my confusion comes in that so far in all my lessons making something plural before the verb is done by -t and after the verb -a/-ä.

You choose the accusative ending according to whether the deed was completed or will be completed.

In English:
"I drink beer" means I drink an unspecified amount of beer.
"I drink the beer" means I drink one unit of beer. Maybe a glass, maybe a bottle, maybe a keg of beer.

And the same two can be done in plural as well:
"I drink beers" means that I drink some amount of beer-units, but it is not specified how many. It is also not specified whether you will ever manage to finish the process of drinking those beers. You might have to stop before everything is empty or there might be an endless supply of beer kegs that you are emptying, never stopping. Not even at the heat death of everything else we know.
"I drink the beers" means that there is some spefic amount beer kegs that I am drinking.

So, here's the same in Finnish
"I drink beer" -> "I drink beers" = "juon olutta" -> "juon oluita"
"I drink the beer" -> "I drink the beers" = "juon oluen" -> "juon oluet".

The plural uses the partitive ending if it's not specified whether you'll complete task or not, and nominative ending if you are going to complete it.

Ajan skuuttia = I am riding a scoot. Maybe just for fun, maybe with a destination.
Ajan skuutin = I will ride the scoot [to some specific place].

"Kesäisin ajan mielelläni skuuttia. Sitä ei kuitenkaan saa pysäköidä kotini lähelle, joten lopuksi ajan skuutin sivummalle parkkiin."

ajan

Perkele, i know ajan as i drive and I ride as ratsastan. I it makes sense that ajun would be associated with a scooter as ride though.

It always drives (rides?) me mad that you somehow "ride" a mechanical thing in English. Riding is a very interactive thing. You need to move your body in synchron with the animal you are riding. Otherwise stuff will start going wrong. On a motorbike you just sit on the thing and it moves you. That's driving, not riding. Cars and motorbikes' bodies don't constantly alter their shape like the sides of an animal do! And on a bicycle you do pedal, but if you stop everything else and just sit on that damn thing, it'll keep moving. (Unless it slows down to almost a halt, in which case it'll tip over.)

To ride a mechanical thing you need to design it to move in such a wobbly manner that you need to make an active effort to stay on it. And it needs to have some kind of an AI so that your social interaction with it also becomes relevant.

In English something you sit on you ride, a bike, a motorcycle, a horse, a ferris wheel. Where something you are inside of you drive, a car, a truck, a forklift.

But at the same time, i ask my dogs if they want to go for a ride when I take them somewhere in my truck.

In English something you sit on you ride, a bike, a motorcycle, a horse, a ferris wheel. Where something you are inside of you drive, a car, a truck, a forklift.

Meaning that you ride a cabriolet.
Nah. It's just a bonkers rule :)

@nocturneAnd you ride when you're a passenger (like the dogs). So, maybe, the horse is the driver? 😀@Tuuktuuk