Level: beginner
The relative pronouns are:
Subject | Object | Possessive |
---|---|---|
who | who/whom | whose |
which | which | whose |
that | that | - |
We use relative pronouns to introduce relative clauses. Relative clauses tell us more about people and things:
Lord Thompson, who is 76, has just retired.
This is the house which Jack built.
Marie Curie is the woman that discovered radium.
We use:
- who and whom for people
- which for things
- that for people or things.
Two kinds of relative clause
There are two kinds of relative clause:
1. We use relative clauses to make clear which person or thing we are talking about:
Marie Curie is the woman who discovered radium.
This is the house which Jack built.
In this kind of relative clause, we can use that instead of who or which:
Marie Curie is the woman that discovered radium.
This is the house that Jack built.
We can leave out the pronoun if it is the object of the relative clause:
This is the house
thatJack built. (that is the object of built)
- Relative pronouns 1
- Relative pronouns 2
Be careful! |
---|
The relative pronoun is the subject/object of the relative clause, so we do not repeat the subject/object:
|
2. We also use relative clauses to give more information about a person, thing or situation:
Lord Thompson, who is 76, has just retired.
We had fish and chips, which I always enjoy.
I met Rebecca in town yesterday, which was a nice surprise.
With this kind of relative clause, we use commas (,) to separate it from the rest of the sentence.
Be careful! |
---|
In this kind of relative clause, we cannot use that:
and we cannot leave out the pronoun: We had fish and chips, which I always enjoy. |
- Relative pronouns 3
- Relative pronouns 4
Level: intermediate
whose and whom
We use whose as the possessive form of who:
This is George, whose brother went to school with me.
We sometimes use whom as the object of a verb or preposition:
This is George, whom you met at our house last year.
(whom is the object of met)This is George’s brother, with whom I went to school.
(whom is the object of with)
but nowadays we normally use who:
This is George, who you met at our house last year.
This is George’s brother, who I went to school with.
- Relative pronouns 5
Relative pronouns with prepositions
When who(m) or which have a preposition, the preposition can come at the beginning of the clause:
I had an uncle in Germany, from who(m) I inherited a bit of money.
We bought a chainsaw, with which we cut up all the wood.
or at the end of the clause:
I had an uncle in Germany, who(m) I inherited a bit of money from.
We bought a chainsaw, which we cut all the wood up with.
But when that has a preposition, the preposition always comes at the end:
I didn't know the uncle that I inherited the money from.
We can't find the chainsaw that we cut all the wood up with.
- Relative pronouns 6
when and where
We can use when with times and where with places to make it clear which time or place we are talking about:
England won the World Cup in 1966. It was the year when we got married.
I remember my twentieth birthday. It was the day when the tsunami happened.Do you remember the place where we caught the train?
Stratford-upon-Avon is the town where Shakespeare was born.
We can leave out when:
England won the World Cup in 1966. It was the year we got married.
I remember my twentieth birthday. It was the day the tsunami happened.
We often use quantifiers and numbers with relative pronouns:
all of which/whom | most of which/whom | many of which/whom |
lots of which/whom | a few of which/whom | none of which/whom |
one of which/whom | two of which/whom | etc. |
She has three brothers, two of whom are in the army.
I read three books last week, one of which I really enjoyed.
There were some good programmes on the radio, none of which I listened to.
Hello orian,
It's not the relative pronoun which acts as an adjective, but rather the whole of the relative clause. Relative clauses can describe the nouns which precede them, or can describe the whole sentence:
The kettle, which was an old antique, made a loud whistling sound.
The relative clause describes 'kettle'.
We put the relative clause immediately after the noun, as you say.
The kettle began to melt, which none of us had expected!
The relative clause describes the whole sentence, giving the speaker's reaction to it.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Dandi
You can find an explanation of when to use commas on this Oxford Dictionary page.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Didi
I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. For one thing, 'who' is not always a relative pronoun (e.g. 'Who invented the telephone?). Also, in the first kind of relative clauses explained above -- these are sometimes called 'defining relative clauses' -- 'who' can always be replaced by 'that', though I would recommend you learn and practise both. But in the second kind of relative clauses explained above -- these are sometimes called 'non-defining relative clauses' -- only 'who' is correct when we are speaking about a person.
The case is the same for 'which': it is also used in questions (e.g. 'Which film did you see?') and 'that' cannot replace it in non-defining relative clauses, when we use 'which' to give more information -- see for example the sentence 'We had fish and chips, which I always enjoy' above.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ahmed Imam
It's true that object forms are used after prepositions, but I would suggest using 'who' here. This is because 'who/whom' is a bit of a special case -- 'whom' has mostly disappeared in most informal, and even many formal, situations nowadays.
There's also the fact that there are situations where both forms are possible. In this case, 'who' or 'whom' is not simply the object of 'about' -- instead it is the head of the phrase 'who/whom is to blame', and it is this phrase that is the object of 'about'. Whether it's correct to use 'who' or 'whom' at the head of such a phrase is a question of style as far as I know.
Hope this helps.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Klecia
Perhaps in a very specific context this would express what you mean, but in general it is not literal but rather figurative. 'after' would not be correct as a substitute for 'from', but perhaps you're thinking of the phrasal verb 'to take after', which means that a person is similar to another one, usually family, e.g. 'When people see my grandmother's green eyes, they say I take after her'.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Goktung123,
We would not use 'being' in this sentence. The correct form of the two is the first one.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Ngeata,
The sentence is correct grammatically.
Generally, we don't provide a checking or correction service on LearnEnglish. We are a small team and there is a very large number of users on the site, so it's simply not possible for us to do this for everyone.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Hayatullah,
In most grammatical descriptions of English relative clause and adjectival clause are alternative names for the same thing: a dependent clause which describes a noun or noun phrase.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Risa warysha
Yes, it's correct to use 'when' instead of 'in which' here, though personally I would use 'in which' -- it just sounds better to me. But 'when' is fine.
'playing gadget' should be 'playing with gadgets'.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello redream
I wouldn't use the word 'which' in either of the first two sentences and in the second one the word 'to' needs to be used before 'you'. 'what' is not correct in the third sentence.
I'm afraid we don't normally provide detailed explanations of texts that don't come from our site, as it takes quite a lot of time to do it well. If you have a more specific question, please free to ask us, however.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Kieu123
B and C could work here, though there is a difference in meaning. B (which is short for 'both of whom were killed in the war') means the two sons were killed in war and C means the two boys killed other people in the war.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello jafari2002
The second sentence is not correct. A class is not a place and so the relative pronoun 'where' is not appropriate there.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello mik0303
As far as I can think, the times of the two clauses are independent. Perhaps there could be particular situation in which they have to be the same, but if such an example exists, it would generally be clear from the context.
Does that make sense? If you find a counterexample of this, please do share it -- this kind of question is very difficult to answer, because there are so many possibilities!
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Eugene Yezhov
Yes, that can be correct, depending on the context and what you mean.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Momocompanyman,
There is no preposition in this sentence. In fact, if there was a preposition in the sentence, the relative pronoun would have to be 'which' instead of 'who' or 'that'. This sentence is a combination of:
Since the antecedent of the pronoun is a person that is the subject of the verb 'understands', we can use 'who' or 'that'.
Best wishes,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Goktug123,
There are three rates in this sentence.
(1) fewer than 1 in 100,000
(2) the rate between 1950 and 2000, which was six times higher than the rate in (1)
(3) the rate between 1900 and 1950, which was fifty times higher than the rate in (1)
In other words, 'one-sixth' does not mean 'one in six', but rather tells us that the rate was 6 in 100,000 between 1950 and 2000.
'One fiftieth' does not mean 'one in fifty', but rather tells us that the rate was 50 in 100,000 between 1900 and 1950.
We would not use 'which' here. You can say 'the rate between 1950 and 2000', 'the rate of (the period) 1950-2000' or 'the 1950-2000 rate'.
Please note that we generally do not answer questions about sentences from elsewhere. We're happy to explain examples from our own pages or try to answer more general questions about the language, but answering questions from other sources is something we rarely do as, first, we have limited time and, second, we do not know the source and the author's intention, making interpretation difficult.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello rajusikar,
'What' is not a relative pronoun.
You can read a good summary of English relative pronouns and their use on this page:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/pronouns/relative-pronouns
It is possible for adverbial clauses to function as relative clauses. These can be introduced with various adverbs, the most common of which are 'where', 'when', why', 'whenever' and 'wherever'. You can see some examples at the bottom of this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_relative_clauses#Adverbials
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Saffron,
I think the plural verb is the correct option here, assuming that there are many boys having tea and we are talking about one of them.
If only one boy is having tea then we have two choices. We could use a defining relative clause and not the phrase 'one of':
Alternatively, we could use a non-defining relative clause:
This would require commas around the clause, as above.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Saffron,
Yes, those sentences look perfectly fine to me.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Saffron,
Those pronouns can all refer to singular or plural nouns.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Abdel El,
Both of those sentences are correct. In the second sentence (who lost) we know that the man lost his own phone. In the first sentence it is not clear if the man lost his own phone or if someone else lost it.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team