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Etsimme ovea sokkelosta, ikään kuin pakenisimme jotakin painajaista.

Etsimme ovea sokkelosta, ikään kuin pakenisimme jotakin painajaista.
We searched for a door in the maze, as if we were escaping some nightmare.
From Lesson 373:Hypothetical comparisons (ikään kuin)·Finnish

Questions & Answers about Etsimme ovea sokkelosta, ikään kuin pakenisimme jotakin painajaista.

Why is pakenisimme in the conditional mood rather than the regular past tense?
The conjunction ikään kuin (as if / as though) sets up a hypothetical scenario that isn't actually happening. In Finnish, this requires the conditional mood marker -isi-, making it pakenisimme (we would escape) instead of the regular past tense pakenimme (we escaped).
Why is sokkelosta in the elative case (out of the maze) instead of the inessive case (in the maze)?
The verb etsiä (to search/look for) requires the location to be in a 'from' case, like the elative -sta/-stä. Even though in English we search 'in' a place, in Finnish you use sokkelosta because you are mentally trying to discover and draw the object 'out of' its location.
How can we tell if etsimme means 'we search' or 'we searched'?
For verbs whose basic stem ends in -i, like etsiä, the present and past (imperfect) tenses look exactly the same in the first-person plural: etsimme. You have to rely on the broader context, which here implies a past narrative.
How do you get the stem pakenisi- from the dictionary form paeta?
Paeta (to escape) is a Type 6 verb. To find the stem, look at the present tense minä form, which is pakenen. Remove the personal ending -n to get the strong stem pakene-, and then add the conditional marker -isi-. The final -e drops out before the -i, resulting in pakenisi-.
Why are jotakin and painajaista in the partitive case?
The verb paeta (to flee / to escape from) is a partitive verb. The thing you are running away from must take the partitive case, which gives us jotakin painajaista instead of the basic nominative jokin painajainen.

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