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Grammar
Course: Grammar > Unit 3
Lesson 3: Relative pronounsRelative pronouns
We use the relative pronouns to connect clauses together, like "the man *who sold the world* is coming over for dinner." David, KA's Grammar Fellow, explains.
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- Atwhats the difference between the witch who cast the spell and the witch that cast the spell? 1:34(18 votes)
- "Who" refers to a person. "That" refers to any a noun, "the city that stands still", "the book that I read". "The boy who fell over", "the girl who finished her homework late".
Hope this helps! :)(18 votes)
- AtDavid said we can use whose, that and which to refer to things. Can I have an example where whose is being used to refer to things? 0:51(13 votes)
- Is this sentence correct, you should not imitate such a boy WHOEVER he.(5 votes)
- "You should not imitate such a boy whoever he is". Add the "is".(13 votes)
- David said "The man who sold the world is coming by on Tuesday" so casually it almost worried me. But then again, it's David. ;)(8 votes)
- Have you noticed that David said grammarians instead of hello grammarians?(2 votes)
- Yes, I did notice that. I was slightly heartbroken for a couple of seconds, Idk why though.(8 votes)
- Is the pronoun "whose" both possessive and relative?(3 votes)
- yes. You've hit the nail on the head. "what" it IS depends on what it DOES in a sentence.(3 votes)
- Are "that" and "who" pretty much the same and are interchangeable in sentences which talk about people? Would "The guy who is my friend is cool" have exactly the same meaning as "The guy that is my friend is cool"?(1 vote)
- You are right. When dealing with "that, which and who", you'll be right most of the time if you simply use "that".
HOWEVER
since "who" is about people, it offers more dignity regarding the person to whom you refer. If you've got to make an error, make it on the side of honor, respect and dignity.(7 votes)
- Why is he talking so fast in the beginning?(3 votes)
- For all of the pronouns is it Who, Whom, Whose, That, and Which. Is that correct?(3 votes)
- Atin the vid, David said, "That's just now how the language shook out, "which" is not a relative pronoun that applies to people." But, why isn't it used for people? Couldn't you say, "Which child are you taking home?" (If that were an orphanage or something.) But would that be wrong? :/ Cause, in that sense, "which" is referring to people. 1:36(2 votes)
- In this case, the word "which" is acting like an adjective that describes the noun "child." More specifically, since this is a question, and the word "which" is posing the question, it would be considered an interrogative adjective.(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Grammarians,
we're gonna talk about relative pronouns today
and what relative pronouns do is they link clauses together, specifically, independent
and dependent clauses, and if you don't know what independent and dependent clauses are, that's okay, just, suffice it to say,
that these pronouns allow you to staple phrases together. For example, in the sentence,
the man who sold the world is coming by on Tuesday, the pronoun who, is the relative pronoun there, it's linking the independent clause, the man is coming by on Tuesday to the dependent clause, sold the world. The relative pronouns of
English are who, whom, whose, that and which, and we use them all for different things. So, we can use who, whom, whose and that to refer to people, and we can use whose, that and which to refer to things. Let me show you. You could say, the salad
that I bought was wilted. But at the same time, I can
also use that in this sentence. The man that I saw smiled. See, I'm using that to refer to him. I could also use who, but the word which, however, does not play
very nicely with people. In the sentence, the witch
who cast the spell is kind, we could use either the
witch who cast the spell or the witch that cast the spell because both that and who work with people. But which, strangely, does not. So we couldn't say, for example, the witch which owns a cat is cruel. That's just now how
the language shook out, which is not a relative
pronoun that applies to people. These are the relative
pronouns of English, this is broadly how
they work and I'm gonna get into more specifics
in following videos. You can learn anything, David out.