que et qui...

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on September 24, 2009 at 6:05pm

It's not always obvious in English whether words like "who", "that" etc refer to the subject or object, but one trick for working it out when "who", "that" etc in English refer to the SUBJECT they generally CAN'T BE MISSED OUT in standard English, but when they refer to the OBJECT, they CAN BE MISSED OUT). For example in:

There's the guy who saw me

the word who refers to the subject of saw, as indicated by the fact that the following isn't generally a grammatical sentence of English[1]:

There's the guy saw me

On the other hand, in this case:

There's the guy who I saw

you can miss out the "who":

There's the guy I saw

and this indicates that who refers to the object of saw in this case.

So as a basic starting point:

- if you CAN'T miss out who, which, that in English, a common translation is qui;
- if you CAN miss them out, a common translation is que.

[1] Tthough there may actually be one or two dialects where it is, so if you speak one of those dialects, this test won't work so well.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on September 24, 2009 at 7:09pm

P.S. For more information you might be interested in the following from the grammar section:

- Subject or object? - some general information on telling the difference between subject and object
- Qui and que - basic introduction to relative pronouns in French, including some examples based more on the traditional (though unreliable) notion of subject/object

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Permalink Reply by Gérard Gatoux on September 25, 2009 at 12:30am

qui is either the subject of the clause or the object of a preposition. It is translated that, which, who or whom
Exp: C'est l'homme avec qui elle a dansé. Qui- object of the preposition avec
Exp: C'est l'étudiant qui parle plusieurs langues. qui is the subject of parle
Exp. C'est la fleur qui a cinq pétales. Qui is the subject of a.

que is always the direct object of the verb in the subordinate clause. It is translated whom or that

Exp.Voilà l'homme que j'aime. Que is the direct object and je the subject.
Voilà le cadeau que je veux. Que is the DO and je the subject.

Où is translated where or when

Exp. Voilà la maison où il est né.
Exp. C'est le jour où il est arrivé.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on September 25, 2009 at 4:51am

Yes, you can kind of see things this way round as well, although there are caveats to beware of:
- in reality, the who/whom distinction is rarely made in practice
- the translation of both que and où can be nothing, which is often the most common translation (e.g. le jour où il est arrivé = the day he arrived)
- once you start going beyond simple qui/que as subject/object, then there are actually a whole host of other subordinators to consider (lequel, dans lequel, dont, de quoi and indeed most QU- words).

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