Making Connections: Relative Pronouns 1

These little words come in handy when you want to start joining sentences together. Say you have a sentence such as this one:

'I like that boy over there'

which you followed by this one:

'The boy is over there waiting for the bus.'

Now, those two sentences one after the other seem a little too repetitive. We can put the two sentences together into one, by using a relative pronoun:

'I like the boy who is over there waiting for the bus.'

Doesn't that sound better? You can improve your French skills in a similar way by learning how to use relative pronouns (les pronoms relatifs).

In this post, we will begin by looking at four of the most simple French relative pronouns. 

The first one is qui. It usually takes the place of 'who' in an English sentence. However, unlike in English, qui can be used to talk about animals and objects as well as people. It all depends on who is doing the action. Take a look at the following examples:

Je connais l'homme qui habit chez ce maison.- I know the man who lives in this house.

The man is the one who is living. 

Elle aime les magasins qui vend les articles de mode.- She likes shops which sell fashionable items. 

The shops are the ones who sell. 

Nous adorons le chien qui cours.- We love the dog that runs. 

The dog is the one who runs. 

You can see that qui  does not always translate directly into 'who', so when writing a sentence in French, it's easiest to remember that qui  is the relative pronoun used to talk about the subject: the person, animal or thing doing the action in the sentence.

When the relative pronoun is replacing an object, we use que. This means we are talking about the noun which receives the action. See some examples below:

Je veux la jupe que j'ai vu dans la magazine. - I want the skirt that I saw in the magazine. 

The skirt was seen by me. 

Ils connaissent la fille que Alice a rencontrée  à l'ecole. - They know the girl that Alice met at school. 

The girl was met by Alice. 

Je vais t'acheter le chien que tu adorons le plus. - I'm going to buy you the dog that you love the most. 

The dog is loved by you. 

As you can see in the examples, que often translates into 'that'. However, be careful, as this is not always the case, and there are times when 'that' should be translated into qui. Que is the relative pronoun used to talk about the object of the sentence: the noun which the action is being done to.

Now, some of the verbs we use in French can be a little bit more complex than others. One such group of more complex verbs are those which are followed by the preposition de. There is a special relative pronoun used for these verbs: dont. Dont is used in place of que when the verb would usually be followed by a de  in it's infinitive form. Don't (hehe) worry to much about dont unless you have a strong vocabulary and you know a number of verbs ending in de. Have a look at the examples to see how it works:

C'est la voiture dont j'ai envie. - That's the car (that) I envy. 

Avoir envie de

Aimez-vous le colour de peinte dont elle a choisi?- Do you like the colour of paint that she choose?

Choisir de

Est-ce que tu comprends le problème dont il parle?- Do you understand the problem (that) he's talking about?

Parler de

Notice that in English, we can sometimes leave these connecting relative pronouns out of our sentence (as shown by the brackets above). In French, this is not the case!

The final relative pronoun for today is a very little word called où.Make sure you remember the accent, otherwise it will be mistaken for the French word ou meaning 'or'. The accented où  usually 

translates to a meaning of 'where',  but can also mean 'when'. It is used as a relative pronoun when talking about places and time. 
Here are some examples:

Paris est la ville où elle est née. -Paris is the city where she was born. 

Paris is a place. 

Decembre est le mois où notre famille se reunit chaque année. - December is the month when our family gets together each year. 

December is a time of the year. 

C'est un joli parc où il y a beaucoup d'espace pour reflèchir. - It's a pretty park where there is lots of space to think. 

The park is a place. 

So, now you know the four basic relative pronouns, qui, que, dont and où  and understand the differences between them, it's time to go out there and use them to make your french shine!