Breakdown of Presidentti, joka voitti sodan, olisi puolustanut meitä.
olla
to be
me
we
sota
war
voittaa
to win
joka
who / which (relative pronoun)
presidentti
president
puolustaa
to defend
Questions & Answers about Presidentti, joka voitti sodan, olisi puolustanut meitä.
How do you form the conditional perfect tense seen in olisi puolustanut?
The conditional perfect expresses what "would have" happened. You make it by combining the conditional form of the verb olla (here, olisi for the third-person singular) and the past participle of the main verb (here, puolustanut from the verb puolustaa).
Why is the word for war, sodan, in the genitive case?
In the phrase joka voitti sodan, the action of winning is completed and affirmative. This makes it a total object, so the basic word sota takes the genitive ending -n.
Since the action of defending would have also been completed, why is meitä in the partitive case instead of the genitive?
The verb puolustaa (to defend) is a partitive verb. This means its object must always be in the partitive case, regardless of whether the action is completed or not. Therefore, me (we) becomes meitä.
Could I use mikä instead of joka for "who" in this sentence?
No, you need to use joka. In Finnish, joka is used to refer back to a specific preceding noun like presidentti, whether it is a person or a thing. The word mikä is mostly used to refer to a whole previous sentence or an abstract concept.
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