Questions & Answers about Kesä meni ohi nopeasti.
Wait, this lesson is about the postposition asti. Is nopeasti an example of that?
No, and this is a great thing to watch out for! The word nopeasti (quickly) is an adverb. It is formed by adding the standard adverb ending -sti to the adjective nopea (fast). It has nothing to do with the postposition asti (until/as far as), even though the last four letters are the same.
How does the phrase meni ohi translate to 'went by'?
Meni is the past tense (imperfect) of the verb mennä (to go). Ohi is a word meaning 'past', 'by', or 'over'. Just like in English, combining them as mennä ohi is a completely natural way to say that time, an event, or a season 'went by' or 'passed'.
Could I use the verb kulua instead to say the time passed?
Yes, absolutely! The verb kulua is heavily used specifically for time passing. You could say Kesä kului nopeasti (The summer passed quickly) and it would be perfectly natural and mean the exact same thing.
Why isn't kesä in the partitive case here?
Kesä is the subject of the sentence, and we are talking about a specific, complete summer as a whole unit going by. Because it is a complete, countable unit acting as the subject, it takes the basic nominative form rather than the partitive.
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