Questions & Answers about Henkilökunta on ystävällinen.
In Finnish, henkilökunta is a grammatically singular noun, even though it refers to a group of people.
- henkilö = person
- kunta (in this word) = group / body → henkilökunta ≈ “staff, personnel”
Because it is grammatically singular, it takes the 3rd person singular of the verb olla (to be):
- Henkilökunta on ystävällinen. = The staff is/are friendly.
Using ovat (are, plural) here would sound wrong in standard Finnish:
- ✗ Henkilökunta ovat ystävällisiä. – ungrammatical in standard Finnish.
Grammatically it matches “The staff is friendly” (singular), because henkilökunta is singular in Finnish.
However, in meaning, it refers to the people working there, just like English staff does, so it covers both the US and UK ways of saying it. You can safely translate it as either:
- The staff is friendly.
- The staff are friendly.
Ystävällinen is the basic (nominative singular) form of the adjective ystävällinen = friendly.
In a sentence of the type X on Y (“X is Y”), the adjective usually agrees in number and case with the subject:
- Subject: henkilökunta → singular nominative
- Predicative adjective: ystävällinen → singular nominative
That’s why we have:
- Henkilökunta on ystävällinen.
Not:
- ✗ …on ystävällisiä – plural form, but the subject is grammatically singular.
- ✗ …on ystävällistä – partitive form; can be used in some contexts, but it’s more advanced and not the basic pattern textbooks start with.
Yes. In this sentence both words are in the nominative singular:
- henkilökunta – nominative singular noun (dictionary form)
- ystävällinen – nominative singular adjective (dictionary form)
The pattern “Subject (nominative) + on + adjective (nominative)” is the normal way to say “X is Y (adjective)”:
- Talo on suuri. – The house is big.
- Ruoka on hyvää. – (Here partitive is common because ruoka is a mass noun, but nominative hyvä is also possible.)
- Henkilökunta on ystävällinen. – The staff is friendly.
You can hear both:
- Henkilökunta on ystävällinen.
- Henkilökunta on ystävällistä.
Both are grammatically possible. Very roughly:
- ystävällinen (nominative) often sounds a bit more “whole, complete” – the staff (as a unit) is friendly.
- ystävällistä (partitive) treats henkilökunta a bit more like a mass / uncountable group, and focuses on friendly-ness as a quality rather than on identifying what it is. It’s very common in everyday speech:
- Henkilökunta on tosi ystävällistä. – The staff is really friendly.
For a learner, it is perfectly fine to follow the simple rule:
> singular subject → use nominative adjective (ystävällinen).
You can learn the partitive nuance later.
No, not in standard Finnish.
In sentences like this, the verb olla (to be) is usually required:
- ✔ Henkilökunta on ystävällinen.
- ✗ Henkilökunta ystävällinen. – ungrammatical in normal Finnish.
In some very colloquial spoken dialects, people may drop on in certain patterns, but as a learner you should always include on here.
Not really, at least not with the same meaning.
The neutral, natural word order here is:
- Henkilökunta on ystävällinen. – The staff is friendly.
If you put the adjective before the noun, ystävällinen henkilökunta becomes more like a noun phrase (“the friendly staff”), not a full sentence:
- Ystävällinen henkilökunta – friendly staff (phrase only)
- Ystävällinen henkilökunta on tärkeää. – Friendly staff is important. (now a full sentence again)
So Ystävällinen henkilökunta on. by itself sounds incomplete, like saying in English: “Friendly staff is.”
You can add adverbs just like in English:
Henkilökunta on erittäin ystävällinen.
– The staff are very friendly.Henkilökunta ei ole kovin ystävällinen.
– The staff are not very friendly.
Note that in the negative sentence you must use ei ole:
- on → positive
- ei ole → negative
Finnish does not have articles like “the” or “a/an”. The bare noun henkilökunta can mean:
- the staff (specific staff, e.g. of this hotel)
- staff in general
Context tells you which is meant. So:
- Henkilökunta on ystävällinen.
– The staff is friendly.
– or Staff are friendly (here).
If you need to be very explicit, you can add more words:
- Tämän hotellin henkilökunta on ystävällinen.
– The staff of this hotel is friendly.
Both refer to people who work somewhere, but they’re used a bit differently:
henkilökunta
- a collective noun = staff, personnel
- grammatically singular
- takes singular verb and typically a singular adjective:
- Henkilökunta on ystävällinen.
työntekijät
- the plural of työntekijä = employee, worker
- means the employees (as individual people)
- grammatically plural
- takes plural verb and plural adjective:
- Työntekijät ovat ystävällisiä. – The employees are friendly.
So you could say either, depending on whether you think of them as a single unit (henkilökunta) or as individual people (työntekijät).
Approximate English-style guidance (not exact):
henkilökunta
- hen – like hen in English
- ki – like key
- lö – like leu in leukemia but with rounded lips (or think of le in French peu)
- kun – like koon (short oo)
- ta – like tah
- Stress is on the first syllable: HEN-ki-lö-kun-ta.
ystävällinen
- y is a front rounded vowel (no exact English equivalent). Try saying ee in see while rounding your lips.
- ys – like ühs (with rounded i sound)
- tä – ta but with ä like a in cat
- väl – vael (again with ä like cat)
- li – like lee
- nen – like nen in linen
- Stress on the first syllable: YS-tä-väl-li-nen.
Also note: double consonants like ll are pronounced a bit longer than single ones. In ystävällinen, the ll is held slightly longer than a single l.
No. Finnish adjectives do not change for gender, because Finnish has no grammatical gender at all:
- Hän on ystävällinen. – He/She is friendly. (same form)
- Henkilökunta on ystävällinen. – The staff is friendly.
The form ystävällinen stays the same regardless of who or what you are describing; it only changes for number and case, not for gender.