Odotin pysäkillä kahdeksan minuuttia.

to wait

Breakdown of Odotin pysäkillä kahdeksan minuuttia.

• -llä: at
• pysäkki: the stop
• kahdeksan: eight

Questions & Answers about Odotin pysäkillä kahdeksan minuuttia.

Why is pysäkillä used here without an English preposition like “at”?

In Finnish, spatial relationships are shown by case endings rather than standalone prepositions. The suffix -llä is the adessive case, which covers meanings like “on,” “at,” or “by.” Thus, pysäkillä literally means “at the bus stop.”

Why is kahdeksan minuuttia in the partitive case instead of the nominative minuutit?

When expressing duration in Finnish, you use the partitive case for the time expression. The word minuutti becomes minuuttia in partitive, so kahdeksan minuuttia means “eight minutes.” The partitive indicates an incomplete quantity or ongoing action.

Could I also say kahdeksan minuutin ajan instead of kahdeksan minuuttia?

Yes. Kahdeksan minuutin ajan is another way to express “for eight minutes.” Here kahdeksan minuutin is the genitive form of the numeral phrase plus ajan (“time of”), literally “the time of eight minutes.”

What tense is odotin, and how is it formed?

Odotin is the imperfect (simple past) tense, first person singular of odottaa (“to wait”). You take the present stem odota- and add the imperfect ending -in, giving odotin, “I waited.”