Word
En tiedä, keneen voin luottaa.
Meaning
I don't know who I can trust.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of En tiedä, keneen voin luottaa.
kuka
who
ei
no / not (negative verb)
tietää
to know
voida
can, to be able to
Questions & Answers about En tiedä, keneen voin luottaa.
Why is the word for "who" keneen here instead of kuka or ketä?
This is because of the verb luottaa (to trust). In Finnish, luottaa requires the person or thing you trust to be in the illative case (the "into" case). In Finnish grammar, you don't just trust someone, you trust into them.
How do you form the illative of kuka to get keneen?
The question word kuka (who) is irregular. For most of its grammatical cases, it uses the stem kene-. To make the illative, you apply the normal rule: double the last vowel and add -n, which gives you keneen.
If voida (can) is also in this sentence, why does luottaa get to decide the case for "who"?
Why is there a comma before keneen?
In Finnish, a comma is strictly required to separate a main clause (En tiedä) from a subordinate clause. The phrase keneen voin luottaa is an indirect question, which acts as a subordinate clause, so you must use a comma here.