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this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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You choose the accusative ending according to whether the deed was completed or will be completed.
In English:
"I drink beer" means I drink an unspecified amount of beer.
"I drink the beer" means I drink one unit of beer. Maybe a glass, maybe a bottle, maybe a keg of beer.
And the same two can be done in plural as well:
"I drink beers" means that I drink some amount of beer-units, but it is not specified how many. It is also not specified whether you will ever manage to finish the process of drinking those beers. You might have to stop before everything is empty or there might be an endless supply of beer kegs that you are emptying, never stopping. Not even at the heat death of everything else we know.
"I drink the beers" means that there is some spefic amount beer kegs that I am drinking.
So, here's the same in Finnish
"I drink beer" -> "I drink beers" = "juon olutta" -> "juon oluita"
"I drink the beer" -> "I drink the beers" = "juon oluen" -> "juon oluet".
The plural uses the partitive ending if it's not specified whether you'll complete task or not, and nominative ending if you are going to complete it.
Ajan skuuttia = I am riding a scoot. Maybe just for fun, maybe with a destination.
Ajan skuutin = I will ride the scoot [to some specific place].
"Kesäisin ajan mielelläni skuuttia. Sitä ei kuitenkaan saa pysäköidä kotini lähelle, joten lopuksi ajan skuutin sivummalle parkkiin."
Perkele, i know ajan as i drive and I ride as ratsastan. I it makes sense that ajun would be associated with a scooter as ride though.
It always drives (rides?) me mad that you somehow "ride" a mechanical thing in English. Riding is a very interactive thing. You need to move your body in synchron with the animal you are riding. Otherwise stuff will start going wrong. On a motorbike you just sit on the thing and it moves you. That's driving, not riding. Cars and motorbikes' bodies don't constantly alter their shape like the sides of an animal do! And on a bicycle you do pedal, but if you stop everything else and just sit on that damn thing, it'll keep moving. (Unless it slows down to almost a halt, in which case it'll tip over.)
To ride a mechanical thing you need to design it to move in such a wobbly manner that you need to make an active effort to stay on it. And it needs to have some kind of an AI so that your social interaction with it also becomes relevant.
In English something you sit on you ride, a bike, a motorcycle, a horse, a ferris wheel. Where something you are inside of you drive, a car, a truck, a forklift.
But at the same time, i ask my dogs if they want to go for a ride when I take them somewhere in my truck.
@nocturne
And you ride when you're a passenger (like the dogs). So, maybe, the horse is the driver? 😀
@Tuuktuuk
Meaning that you ride a cabriolet.
Nah. It's just a bonkers rule :)