Relative Pronouns: qui, que, où, dont
Relative Pronouns: qui, que, où, dont
English relative pronouns split mainly by whether the antecedent is a person ('who/whom') or a thing ('which'), with 'that' usable for either and often droppable altogether. French relative pronouns ignore that person/thing distinction completely and instead choose the pronoun by grammatical role inside the clause — subject, object, or object-of-de — which means a single French pronoun like qui covers both 'the man who...' and 'the train that...' with no separate word needed for people versus things.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
qui = subject of the relative clause
L'homme qui parle est mon professeur.
The man who is speaking is my teacher.
Use qui when the person or thing being described is doing the action of the relative clause — qui is the subject of parle. Unlike English, which splits 'who' (people) from 'which' (things), qui never changes for the antecedent's animacy, gender, or number; it stays qui whether you're talking about un homme, une femme, un train, or des enfants. Note also that qui is never dropped, unlike English 'that/who', which is frequently omitted ('the man [who] I saw').
que = object of the relative clause
Le livre que je lis est intéressant.
The book that I am reading is interesting.
Use que when the described noun is instead the object being acted on inside the clause — je lis le livre becomes le livre que je lis. A useful test: if you can insert a subject pronoun right after the relative word (que je...), it's que; if the relative word is immediately followed by the verb (qui parle), it's qui. Also note: que elides to qu' before a vowel (le livre qu'il lit), and unlike English 'that', which can often be dropped ('the book I'm reading'), French que can never be omitted.
où = place or time
La ville où j'habite est belle. / Le jour où je suis né...
The city where I live is beautiful. / The day when I was born...
où covers both physical place ('where') and, less obviously for an English speaker, time ('when') — le jour où, l'année où, le moment où all use où rather than quand inside a relative clause. English keeps 'where' and 'when' as two separate words even in this exact same relative-clause role, so remember that French collapses both functions into the single word où here.
dont replaces de + noun — the closest French gets to a relative 'whose'
C'est le livre dont je parle. / la femme dont le fils est médecin
It's the book I'm talking about. / the woman whose son is a doctor
dont is the pronoun French uses whenever the underlying verb or noun phrase needs de: parler de (dont je parle, 'that I'm talking about'), avoir besoin de (dont j'ai besoin, 'that I need'), and possession (la femme dont le fils est médecin, literally 'the woman of-whom the son is a doctor'). English handles the parler de case by stranding the preposition at the end of the clause ('the book I'm talking about') and handles the possession case with a dedicated word, 'whose' — French dont does both jobs with one invariable word, and critically, that word must move to the front of the clause; French never strands de the way English strands 'about' at the end. The instinct to leave the preposition dangling, natural in English, produces an ungrammatical sentence in French — default to dont whenever the verb needs de.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| French | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| qui | kee | who / that / which (subject) |
| que (qu') | kuh | that / which / whom (object) |
| où | oo | where / when |
| dont | dohn | of which / whose / about which |
| ce qui | suh kee | what (subject of clause) |
| ce que | suh kuh | what (object of clause) |
| ce dont | suh dohn | what (with a de-verb) |
| lequel / laquelle | luh-KEL / lah-KEL | which one (after a preposition) |