Breakdown of He ovat asiantuntijoita, joiden verkosto on tärkeä.
olla
to be
he
they
tärkeä
important
joka
who / which (relative pronoun)
verkosto
network (social, organizational)
asiantuntija
expert
Questions & Answers about He ovat asiantuntijoita, joiden verkosto on tärkeä.
Why is joiden used here instead of jonka?
Joiden is the genitive plural form of the relative pronoun joka (which/who). In this sentence, it translates to 'whose'. It has to be in the plural form because it refers back to the plural word asiantuntijoita (experts). If we were talking about just one expert, we would use the singular form, jonka.
Why is asiantuntijoita in the partitive case?
In Finnish, when you say what a group of people or things are (using the verb olla), the plural noun is usually put in the partitive case. Since 'experts' is a plural category here, we use the partitive plural asiantuntijoita.
If joiden refers to a plural word, why are verkosto and tärkeä in the singular?
The word joiden links the two parts of the sentence, but verkosto (network) is the subject of the second part. The experts share one collective network, so verkosto is in the basic singular form. The adjective tärkeä (important) describes the network, not the experts, so it must match verkosto in the singular.
Does joiden only mean 'whose' for people, just like in English?
In this sentence it means 'whose' because it refers to people (asiantuntijoita). However, unlike English, the Finnish pronoun joka (and its forms like joiden) is used for both people and things. If the sentence was about 'companies whose network is important', you would still use joiden.
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