Breakdown of Etsin kissaa, mutta se oli karannut.
olla
to be
kissa
cat
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
mutta
but
etsiä
to look for
karata
to escape
Questions & Answers about Etsin kissaa, mutta se oli karannut.
How is the pluperfect tense formed in oli karannut?
The pluperfect (meaning someone 'had done' something) is formed by using the imperfect past tense of the verb olla (here, oli) combined with the active past participle of the main verb. It is used here to show that the cat had already escaped before you started looking for it.
Why does the participle karannut have a double 'n'?
The base verb is karata (to run away or escape), which is a Type 4 verb. To form the active past participle for Type 4 verbs, you drop the final -ta or -tä and add -nnut or -nnyt. Therefore, kara- becomes karannut.
Why is the cat in the partitive case (kissaa)?
Since Finnish doesn't have a continuous tense, how do we know etsin translates to 'I was looking'?
Finnish uses the standard imperfect past tense (etsin) for both 'I looked' and 'I was looking'. The English translation naturally uses 'was looking' here because the partitive object (kissaa) and the contrast with the pluperfect verb (oli karannut) strongly imply that the searching was an ongoing process in the past.
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