relative pronouns

Finnish has three main types of relative pronouns:

• joka ‘which/who/that’, which is used to refer to a single word in the preceding sentence or to individuals;

• mika ‘what’, which has an abstract referent or refers to the entire pecvious sentence;

• kuka ‘who’ is used to refer to people; but more rarely used in kirjakieli ; common in puheieli .

In my experience English speakers tend to assume that the demonstrative pronoun that (tuo, se), conjunction that (että) and relative pronoun that (joka, mikä) are interchangeable in Finnish like they are inglish.

The relative pronouns inflect by case and number. Here are some examples.