A relative pronoun is a pronoun that relates back to something else already mentioned. This sounds a little like all pronouns, except that relative pronouns relate back to something already mentioned within the sentence. Other pronouns are normally used when nouns have been mentioned within the conversation, but not necessarily that sentence.

In English, we encounter relative pronouns all the time, in the form of “that,” “who,” “whom,” “what,” and “which.” In French, relative pronouns operate differently. Instead of having many separate words, the same ones are used, with the meanings depending on the construction of the sentence.

Relative pronouns are normally used to introduce another thought or idea into the sentence. Consider the following English sentence: “The boy who lives in the red house is my friend.” If you strip this sentence to the bare essentials, it boils down to “the boy is my friend.” The “who lives in the red house” is included as explanation, expanding the meaning of the sentence and clarifying (in this case) the subject. This part of the sentence is known as a subordinate clause; the word in the sentence that it modifies (“boy”) is known as the antecedent.

The subordinate clause is not necessarily integral to the essential meaning of the sentence; it is a separate idea included for more information. When you encounter such sentences, isolate the phrase that can be stripped out: This is your subordinate clause. To translate it into French, you must use the correct French relative pronoun, which may not be obvious from the construction of the English sentence.

Relative pronouns in English are often omitted, so you may have to do a bit of detective work in breaking down the sentence in order to translate it. English is notorious for dropping the word “that” from the sentence, but the presence of its equivalent is a necessity in French.

There are five distinct relative pronouns in French: que, qui, lequel, dont, and où. The appropriate English translation is based on how the relative pronoun is used in the subordinate clause, depending on whether it is being used as the subject or the object of the clause. This section outlines the combinations that can occur.

Relative Pronoun as the Subject of the Clause

When the relative pronoun is used as the subject of the clause, the pronoun qui is used in French to represent both people and things. An easy way to find out whether the English relative pronoun is the subject of the clause is to see if the clause already has a subject and verb inside it. If it does not, qui is used as the subject of the clause, with the verb and the rest of the clause immediately following it. The entire clause is then placed after the noun it modifies in the sentence.