Breakdown of Me keilattiin ja sen jälkeen me mentiin baariin.
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
ja
and
me
we
mennä
to go
baari
bar
jälkeen
after
keilata
to bowl
Questions & Answers about Me keilattiin ja sen jälkeen me mentiin baariin.
How does keilattiin mean "we bowled" here?
In spoken Finnish, the passive form is used almost exclusively for the "we" form. Here, keilattiin is the past passive of keilata (to bowl). While standard written Finnish uses me keilasimme, everyday speech uses me keilattiin.
Doesn't the passive usually mean the doer of the action is unknown?
Yes, in formal written Finnish! But in spoken Finnish, adding the pronoun me (we) before a passive verb gives it a specific doer. Me mentiin clearly means "we went", completely replacing the standard written form me menimme.
Why does keilattiin have a double "tt" while mentiin only has one "t"?
Why is the word se in the genitive form sen before jälkeen?
The word jälkeen is a postposition meaning "after". Postpositions almost always require the word that comes right before them to be in the genitive case. So se (it) becomes sen to form sen jälkeen (after it or after that).
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