Breakdown of Me hyydyttiin sen verran, et me leiriydytään tänne.
me
we
tänne
to here
että
that (conjunction)
sen verran
so much / to such an extent
Questions & Answers about Me hyydyttiin sen verran, et me leiriydytään tänne.
How does sen verran, et function in this sentence?
It acts as a correlative phrase meaning 'to such an extent that' or 'so much that'. Verran comes from the noun verta (amount or quantity), so sen verran literally means 'an amount of it'. Et is just the spoken language shortening of että. Together, they link the degree of exhaustion to the resulting action (making camp).
Why do the verbs hyydyttiin and leiriydytään look like passive forms?
In spoken Finnish, passive forms are heavily used for the first-person plural ('we') instead of standard forms like hyydyimme and leiriydymme. Here you see both tenses at work: hyydyttiin is the past passive ('we ran out of steam') and leiriydytään is the present passive ('we make camp').
The verb hyytyä usually means 'to freeze' or 'to congeal'. How does it mean 'ran out of steam' here?
Hyytyä is very commonly used in colloquial Finnish to describe a person or machine stalling, losing energy, or giving up. You can think of it metaphorically as your muscles or energy 'congealing' so you can no longer keep moving forward.
Why is the directional word tänne (to here) used instead of the static täällä (in here)?