Breakdown of Dit is de man wiens zoon de stichter van het bedrijf is.
zijn
to be
de man
the man
dit
this (neuter)
het
it
Questions & Answers about Dit is de man wiens zoon de stichter van het bedrijf is.
Why do we use wiens here instead of wier?
The word wiens translates to "whose" and is used to refer back to masculine and neuter singular nouns. Because the antecedent here is de man (a masculine noun), we use wiens. If the sentence were about a feminine noun like de vrouw or a plural noun, you would use wier instead.
Does wiens get its masculine form from de man or from zoon?
It gets it from de man (the possessor). A common mistake is trying to make the pronoun match the noun being owned (the zoon), but in Dutch, wiens and wier strictly follow the gender and number of the noun they refer back to.
Is wiens commonly used in everyday spoken Dutch?
It is quite formal and mostly used in writing or formal speech. In everyday casual conversation, a Dutch speaker would be much more likely to say Dit is de man van wie de zoon de stichter van het bedrijf is.
Why does the final verb is go at the very end of the sentence?
The phrase starting with wiens is a relative clause, which provides extra information about de man. Relative clauses follow subordinate word order, which means the conjugated verb (is) gets pushed all the way to the end of the clause.