Breakdown of Люди, которые ходят в парк вечером, любят тишину.
Questions & Answers about Люди, которые ходят в парк вечером, любят тишину.
Которые is a relative pronoun meaning who / that / which and it must agree in number and gender with the noun it refers to.
- The noun is люди (people) – masculine plural in meaning, grammatically just plural.
- So the relative pronoun also has to be plural → которые.
Compare:
- Человек, который ходит в парк вечером, любит тишину. – One person, который (singular).
- Люди, которые ходят в парк вечером, любят тишину. – People, которые (plural).
You would not use кто here, because кто is a question/indefinite pronoun (who?), not a relative pronoun that introduces a clause describing a specific noun.
Yes, both commas are necessary.
Которые ходят в парк вечером is a non‑defining (non‑restrictive) relative clause that gives extra information about люди:
- Люди, которые ходят в парк вечером, любят тишину.
→ We are talking about people in general and then adding extra info: specifically, those who go to the park in the evening.
In Russian, non-defining relative clauses are always separated by commas on both sides.
If you removed the clause, the sentence would still be grammatically complete:
- Люди любят тишину.
With a defining (restrictive) clause (rare with люди here), you might sometimes see different punctuation, but with которые describing люди like this, the commas are standard and expected.
Russian has two main verb stems for movement: идти / пойти (uni‑directional, usually one trip) and ходить (multi‑directional, habitual or repeated).
- Ходят – 3rd person plural of ходить, imperfective, multi‑directional
→ suggests a habitual action: they (regularly) go to the park in the evenings.
If you said:
- Люди, которые идут в парк вечером… – people who are (right now) going to the park in the evening (this evening, in progress).
- Люди, которые пойдут в парк вечером… – people who will go to the park this evening (one future occasion).
Here the idea is habit or typical behavior, so ходят is the natural choice.
The preposition в can take either accusative or prepositional case, with a clear meaning difference:
В + accusative (в парк) → movement into / to a place
- ходить в парк = to go to the park.
В + prepositional (в парке) → location in a place
- быть в парке = to be in the park.
In this sentence, the verb is ходят – they go – so we are talking about direction / destination, not where they are at the moment. That is why в парк (accusative) is correct.
Вечером here is the instrumental singular of вечер used as an adverbial time expression, meaning in the evening. This is a very common pattern:
- утром – in the morning
- днём – in the daytime/afternoon
- вечером – in the evening
- ночью – at night
You can say other things, but they slightly change the nuance:
по вечерам – literally “by evenings,” meaning in the evenings / on evenings (regularly).
- Люди, которые по вечерам ходят в парк… – emphasizes regularity, more strongly habitual.
каждым вечером / каждый вечер – each evening / every evening (very explicit about every single evening).
The original вечером already implies a typical time (when they go), so it fits well with habitual ходят.
Both любить and нравиться can be translated as to like, but they work differently grammatically and stylistically:
Любить
- Pattern: кто? + любит + что?
- Subject is the person who likes something.
- Takes accusative: тишину.
- Often stronger or more direct: to love / really like / be fond of.
Here: Люди любят тишину. – People (subject) love/like silence.
Нравиться
- Pattern: что? + нравится + кому?
- Subject is the thing that pleases someone.
- Person is in dative:
- тишина нравится людям – silence is pleasing to people.
Using любят is simpler here and sounds natural for a general statement about what people prefer.
The verb любить takes a direct object in the accusative case:
- любить (кого? что?) – to love/like whom? what?
So:
- тишина – nominative (dictionary form: “silence” as the subject of a sentence).
- тишину – accusative singular, used because тишина is the object of любят.
Structure:
- Люди (кто?) любят (что?) тишину.
If тишина were the subject, you might say:
- Тишина нравится людям. – Silence is liked by people.
Here, тишина is nominative, and людям is dative.
Ходят agrees with the subject of the relative clause, which is которые, and которые in turn agrees with люди.
Chain of agreement:
- Main noun: люди (plural)
- Relative pronoun: которые (plural, matching люди)
- Verb in relative clause: ходят (3rd person plural, matching которые/люди)
So the relative clause is internally consistent and also consistent with the noun it describes:
- Люди, которые ходят… – People, who go…
- If it were singular: Человек, который ходит… – A person, who goes…
Yes, you can change the word order; Russian is fairly flexible. These are all grammatically correct:
- которые ходят в парк вечером
- которые вечером ходят в парк
- которые ходят вечером в парк
The basic meaning stays the same: they go to the park in the evening.
Word order can slightly shift what is emphasized:
- которые вечером ходят в парк
– mild emphasis that evening is when they go.
In everyday speech, the original которые ходят в парк вечером is very natural, but the alternatives don’t sound wrong.
Yes, люди, ходящие в парк вечером, любят тишину is grammatically correct.
Difference:
- которые ходят – full relative clause with a finite verb (most common, most neutral style in speech).
- ходящие – active present participle of ходить, used as an adjective-like form modifying люди.
Люди, ходящие в парк вечером… feels:
- a bit more bookish / written style,
- slightly more compact, like saying people who go… vs people, going… in a descriptive way.
For most learners and in most contexts, которые ходят is the more natural choice to use.