Breakdown of Sää oli kamala, ja me olimme sisällä.
olla
to be
ja
and
me
we
sisällä
inside
sää
the weather
kamala
terrible
Questions & Answers about Sää oli kamala, ja me olimme sisällä.
I see oli and olimme. How do we form the past tense of 'to be' here?
Oli is the past tense of on (is), used here for the third-person singular subject sää (weather). Olimme is the past tense of olemme (we are), matching the subject me (we). To form the past tense of this verb, the basic stem ole- changes to oli-, and then you add the usual personal endings like -mme.
Why is kamala in its basic form and not in the partitive case?
Because the subject sää (weather) is treated as a regular singular noun. When describing a singular noun with the verb 'to be', the adjective stays in its basic form. If the subject was an uncountable mass word (like kahvi or vesi), you would use the partitive case.
Could I drop the word me and just say ja olimme sisällä?
Yes! In Finnish, the verb ending -mme already tells us that the subject is 'we'. Using the pronoun me is optional and is mostly done for emphasis or to make the sentence flow better.
The word for 'inside' is sisällä. Does the -llä ending mean something specific?
Yes, the -llä ending is a location ending that usually means 'on' or 'at'. Here it attaches to the root word sisä- (inner or interior) to literally mean 'at the inner part'. Together, it acts as a single location word meaning 'inside'.
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