Catching Up at the Reunion
When you attend a high school reunion (de reünie), you will inevitably end up trying to remember classmates and catching up on the latest gossip (de roddel). To describe people based on their relationships, lifestyle, or possessions, you need a specific type of relative clause.
Possessive Relative Clauses: van wie (whose)
In English, you use "whose" to describe someone by what they have or who they know (e.g., "the man whose wife is a doctor"). In Dutch, when referring to people, you use van wie (literally: of whom).
Just like other relative clauses, a clause starting with van wie is a subclause. This means all verbs inside the relative clause are pushed to the very end of that clause.
| Where is the classmate whose invitation is lost? | Waar is de klasgenoot van wie de uitnodiging kwijt is? |
| During the reunion, we look for the man whose face is unrecognizable. | Tijdens de reünie zoeken we de man van wie het gezicht onherkenbaar is. |
| That is the gossip about the woman whose husband is a surgeon. | Dat is de roddel over de vrouw van wie de echtgenoot chirurg is. |
Mid-Sentence Relative Clauses
Often, the relative clause describes the subject of your main sentence. When this happens, the van wie clause is inserted directly after the person it describes, temporarily interrupting the main sentence.
Because the relative clause ends with its own verbs, and the main clause resumes immediately afterward with its verb, you will usually see a comma separating the two verbs.
| The classmate whose husband we met, is here. | De klasgenoot van wie we de echtgenoot hebben ontmoet, is hier. |
| The man whose age we do not know, is not married. | De man van wie we de leeftijd niet weten, is niet getrouwd. |
| The classmate whose stories are boring, is too tired to talk. | De klasgenoot van wie de verhalen saai zijn, is te moe om te praten. |