Matka kestää vain minuutin.

The trip takes only a minute.

Breakdown of Matka kestää vain minuutin.

• vain: only
• kestää: to last
• matka: the trip
• minuutti: the minute

Questions & Answers about Matka kestää vain minuutin.

What does kestää mean in this sentence?

kestää here means “to last” or “to take (in terms of time).” It tells you how long something continues. In present tense third person singular it’s kestää, and in past tense it becomes kesti.

Why is minuutin in the genitive case? Shouldn’t it be the partitive (minuuttia)?

Finnish offers two common ways to express a duration after kestää:

1. A partitive number phrase, e.g. kesti kaksi tuntia, kestää 10 minuuttia
2. A genitive number phrase, especially for a single unit: kestää minuutin (short for kestää yhden minuutin)
   In the genitive construction, minuutti becomes minuutin (genitive singular), which here functions much like a direct object indicating a complete one-minute span.

Could we say kestää vain minuuttia instead of minuutin?

No. minuutin is the correct genitive form when you use the genitive-number construction for one minute. The partitive singular minuuttia is used with partitive durations (often with numerals greater than one or to indicate an indefinite amount), e.g. kestää joitain minuutteja, but not here.

Do I have to include yksi (“one”) to say “one minute”?

No. You could say kestää vain yhden minuutin, but Finnish often drops yhden when it’s clear you mean a single unit. So kestää vain minuutin already conveys “it lasts only one minute.”

What is vain, and why does it come before minuutin?

vain means “only.” In Finnish it usually sits right before the word or phrase it limits. Here it modifies minuutin (= “only a minute”). You can move vain for emphasis, but before the thing it restricts is most natural.

How would I say this if the trip took two minutes instead?

With numerals above one you normally use the partitive plural:
Matka kestää kaksi minuuttia.
(You can also form a genitive-number phrase with ajan, e.g. kestää kahden minuutin ajan, but kaksi minuuttia is far more common.)

Can I replace matka with a pronoun?

Yes. If the context is clear, you can say:
Se kestää vain minuutin.
(“It lasts only a minute.”)

How do I express the same idea in the past tense?

Change kestää to its past form kesti:
Matka kesti vain minuutin.
(“The trip lasted only a minute.”)

What’s the difference between kestää and ottaa for talking about time?

Both verbs work in this context:
• Matka kestää vain minuutin. (“The trip lasts only a minute.”)
• Matka ottaa vain minuutin. (“The trip takes only a minute.”)
kestää emphasizes the duration (“it lasts”), while ottaa literally means “to take” (in duration sense). In everyday speech they’re interchangeable here.