"It will be winter soon!"

Translation: 冬天快到了！

[kwaldman]

Why 了？ Winter is not here yet nor is it completed 8n this context

[NasuSamaruk0]

Along with 快 (lit. "fast"), 了 plays the role that expresses "just about to".

[kwaldman]

谢谢您。 this is why chinese is endlessly fascinating - time for me to go back to the grammar book.

[OstenCramer]

Yeah, this is actually really interesting. This was the hardest thing for me to wrap my mind around when I was a first year student, and my teacher said "了 marks completion, but it isn't necessarily past tense."

But yeah, the way I chose to think about it is that it is marking imminent completion, as in, this will be completed in the future. The 快 lets me know it won't be long.

It can be used with other units of time, for example:

一年后我会到了。 I will arrive in one year.
今年春天什么时候会到了？ When will spring arrive this year.
我一会儿就到了！ I’ll be there in a second!