When and how to use: qui, que and a qui

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on March 7, 2012 at 6:59pm

Both qui and que mean "who", "which", "that" and introduce what is sometimes called a "relative clause" (if you like, a 'sentence-within-a-sentene' that adds a description).

Now, qui is used in French as the subject of a relative clause and que as the object. In English, we don't make a distinction in the choice of "who/which/that". But we do usually make a distinction in whether who/which/that can be omitted:

• in English, who/which/that can usually be omitted when it represents the object of the relative clause.

So if you're not good at distinguishing between subject vs object, then one clue is to consider whether "who/which/that" can be omitted in English. If it can, we probable want que in French; if it can't, we probably want qui.

For example:

"He's the person that helps me."

here it would sound odd to say:

"He's the person helps me."

So in this case, we want qui:

C'est la personne qui m'aide.

On the other hand, consider:

"Here's the book that I bought."

Here, we could miss out that:

"Here's the book I bought."

So, in French, this is a clue that we need que:

Voici le livre que j'ai acheté.

There's some more information on using qui and que, including more clues to distinguishing subject vs object, in the French grammar section of the web site.

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