Breakdown of Siitä huolimatta, että koulutus on ilmaista, se ei ole aina tasa-arvoista.
olla
to be
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
aina
always
Questions & Answers about Siitä huolimatta, että koulutus on ilmaista, se ei ole aina tasa-arvoista.
Why do we use siitä before huolimatta, and why is it in the elative case?
This is the pronoun bridge in action. The postposition huolimatta (despite) grammatically requires the word before it to be in the elative case. Because you cannot attach an adposition directly to an että (that) clause, you must use the pronoun se as a structural bridge. Therefore, se becomes siitä to satisfy the case requirement of huolimatta.
Could we just skip the pronoun bridge and say huolimatta, että?
No, in standard Finnish you cannot drop the pronoun bridge here. Adpositions like huolimatta cannot govern a subordinate clause directly. You always need the dummy pronoun se, inflected in the correct case, to act as a physical anchor for the että clause.
Why are the adjectives ilmaista and tasa-arvoista in the partitive case?
The subject of the sentence, koulutus (education), is an abstract, uncountable concept here rather than a specific, countable object. When describing abstract concepts or mass nouns with the verb olla (to be), the predicative adjective must be in the partitive case.
How is the adjective tasa-arvoista formed?