Relative Pronouns

There are five relative pronouns in French: qui, que, dont, où, and lequel. There are also several variations of those, such as ce qui, ce dont, or lesquelles and lesquels.

French relative pronouns are equivalent to seven English relative pronouns and adverbs: that, when, where, which, who, whom, and whose.

Dont

Rule 1: The pronoun dont replaces a person or thing previously introduced with the preposition de. It does not change according to gender or number. It can be translated differently depending on the context. Most of the time, dont means "of which" and "whose".

Où

Rule 2: The relative pronoun où is invariable and most of the time refers to a place. Où means "where".

Rule 3: Sometimes où can also relate to a point in time. This is the case with the following expressions: le jour où, le moment où, l’année où, etc.

Que

Rule 4: The relative pronoun que is invariable and introduces a relative sentence in which it is the object. It can refer to both people and things.

Rule 5: Before the vowel and the silent "h", we use qu‘.

Note: In English, we can often leave out this relative pronoun, but never in French.

Qui

Rule 6: The relative pronoun qui is invariable and introduces a relative sentence in which it’s the subject. It can refer to people or objects.

Lequel, Laquelle, Lesquels, Lesquelles

Rule 7: The relative pronoun lequel usually represents things or people in a relative clause that comes after prepositions (dans, pendant, pour, parmi, ...) or prepositional expressions (à côté de, ...).

Rule 8: The forms of lequel agree in number and gender with the word it refers to.

Note: If the pronoun doesn’t replace a thing but a person, we can also simply use qui.

À + lequel

Rule 9: When lequel is used with à, pronoun and preposition are usually merged into one word.

De + lequel

Rule 10: When lequel is used with de, pronoun and preposition are also usually merged into one word.

Bonus: Ce qui, Ce que, Ce dont

Rule 11: We use the relative pronouns ce qui, ce que, ce dont when the pronoun does not refer to a single word in the sentence, but rather to an entire clause. They mean "what".

- we use ce qui as the subject of the relative sentence

- we use ce que as a direct object of the relative sentence. (ce qu' in front of vowels and mute "h")

- ce dont is used for an indirect object introduced with de