Breakdown of Me oltiin melkein kotona, ku se sattui.
olla
to be
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
me
we
koti
the home
kun
when (conjunction)
sattua
to happen (by chance)
melkein
almost
Questions & Answers about Me oltiin melkein kotona, ku se sattui.
Why is it ku instead of kun?
ku is the very common spoken language version of kun (when). In everyday speech, Finns constantly drop the final letters from small grammatical words, so kun becomes just ku.
Why does the sentence use oltiin for 'we were' instead of olimme?
In spoken Finnish, the pronoun me is almost always paired with the passive form of the verb. So instead of the standard language me olimme, you will hear me oltiin.
I thought sattua meant 'to hurt'. Why is it translated as 'happened' here?
The verb sattua has two very common meanings: 'to hurt' (like päähän sattuu for 'my head hurts') and 'to happen by chance' or 'to happen'. In this context, se sattui simply means 'it happened'.
Why is 'at home' kotona rather than using the standard 'in' ending like kodissa?
The word for home, koti, has special local forms that you just have to memorize. To say 'at home', you use kotona. If you were going 'home' (to home), it would be kotiin, and leaving 'from home' is kotoa.
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