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Questions & Answers about Matka kestää tunnin.
What does kestää mean in this sentence?
Here kestää means “to last” or “to take (time)”. It indicates how long the trip continues.
Why is tunnin used instead of tunti here? What case is that?
Tunnin is the accusative singular form (which looks like the genitive). With verbs like kestää, a precise duration is marked by the accusative, not the nominative tunti.
Why isn’t tunnin in the partitive (tuntia)?
After numerals greater than one or when speaking of an indefinite amount, Finnish uses the partitive (tuntia). But for exactly one hour with kestää, you use the accusative/genitive singular tunnin.
How would you say “The trip lasts two hours” in Finnish?
You keep kestää and use a numeral plus the partitive:
Matka kestää kaksi tuntia.
How do you ask “How long does the trip take?” in Finnish?
The most common question is:
Kuinka kauan matka kestää?
You can also say Miten kauan matka kestää?
What is the past tense of kestää, and how do you say “The trip took an hour”?
The past form is kesti.
So you say: Matka kesti tunnin.
Can you use viedä or ottaa instead of kestää for this meaning?
Informally people say Se vie tunnin (“It takes an hour”), but the standard verb is kestää. Ottaa is not normally used to express duration.
Is the word order fixed? Could you say “Tunnin matka kestää”?
Finnish word order is flexible thanks to cases, but the neutral order is Subject–Verb–Object (Matka kestää tunnin). Fronting tunnin simply shifts emphasis onto the duration.
How do you say “a one-hour trip” using an adjective?
Use the expression tunnin mittainen (lit. “hour-measured”):
tunnin mittainen matka