Ketkä

Ketkä is the Finnish plural interrogative pronoun meaning “who” when the question concerns more than one person. It is the plural form of kuka, used to inquire about a group of people rather than a single individual. In sentence position, ketkä functions like other question words, and the verb typically agrees with the plural subject.

Forms and usage in Finnish grammar

Ketkä is nominative plural. Its related forms include keiden, used as the genitive plural to express “whose” for multiple people, as in Keiden auto on tämä? “Whose car is this?” The partitive form ketä is used when the question concerns an indefinite or partial object, as in Ketä odotat? “Whom are you waiting for?” These inflected forms allow ketkä to fit different syntactic roles in a sentence, similar to other Finnish pronouns.

Examples

- Ketkä ovat täällä? — “Who are here?” or “Who’s here?”

- Ketkä tämän tekivät? — “Who did this?”

- Keiden auto on tämä? — “Whose car is this?”

- Ketä odotat? — “Whom are you waiting for?”

Relation to other forms

Ketkä is contrasted with kuka, which asks about a single person. Finnish interrogatives form a small set for people versus things: kuka/ketkä for persons, mikä/mitkä for things, with corresponding case forms to express subject, possession, or object relationships.

See also

Kuka, mitkä, mikä. These related Finnish interrogatives help distinguish singular and plural references and their grammatical cases.