I was recently revising the
English-French entry for the word
who and felt that, in addition to the dictionary entry, some words of explanation may help.
Who is one of those awkward little words that feels like it should be simple, but sometimes things aren't that straightforward. It's also a frequently searched-for word in the dictionary.
Who when used to ask a questionWhen used to ask a question, the French word for
who is practically always
qui. But as with asking questions in French generally,
what happens to the rest of the sentence can be more tricky.
In informal speech, a very common way to ask a question is to use what's technically called an
in situ question. This is a question with "normal sentence order". In English,
in situ questions are generally only used for emphasis or to suggest surprise ("you saw
who yesterday?"). But in French, at least in informal speech, they're a common, neutral way of asking a question:
(1)
T'as vu qui?Literally: "You've seen who?"
Who did you see?Vous voyez qui ce soir?Literally: "You are-seeing who this evening"
Who are you seeing this evening?(2)
Elle vient avec qui?Literally: "She comes with who?"
Who's she coming with?(3)
Qui est là?Who's there?Qui vient demain?Who's coming tomorrow?When
qui is the subject of the verb, as in the last example, the verb generally takes the
il/elle (3rd person singular) form. As in English, a common exception is
qui sont...? for
who are...?. Notice too that the abbreviated form
t'as is common in this informal style, whereas in more formal/careful speech and writing, the form would be
tu as. To give you an idea of level of formality, (1) and (2) would be acceptable when talking with or writing an e-mail to a friend (or in an on-line chat session). (3) is pretty much always acceptable: when
qui is the
subject, there's really no other place in the sentence to move it to...!
Qui can also be used with
est-ce que, often used as a general "question marker" in French. However, as the
subject, the form is
qui est-ce qui. (If you're not familiar with the notions of
subject and
object, then roughly speaking,
qui is the
subject when it is asking about who is
doing the action, and the
object when asking about who is
receiving it; another way of looking at things is that it's probably the subject if there isn't some other subject[1]!) Here are some example sentences with
qui est-ce que and
qui est-ce qui:
Qui est-ce qui vient?Who's coming?Qui est-ce que tu as vu hier?Who did you see yeterday?Avec qui est-ce qu'il vient?Who is he coming with?These forms are not particularly informal or formal: they would generally be acceptable in most spoken and written contexts. Notice how in French, you would never split up
avec qui, whereas in English, it sounds quite unnatural
not to use the formula
who ... with?.
In formal French, if qui is the object of the verb (or of a preposition), then it can be used with inversion: qui invitez-vous?; avec qui vient-il?. When inversion is acceptable, which form is used and how formal it sounds is quite a complex issue. At GCSE/SAT level, try and make sure you understand inversion, but you'll generally not need to use it.Who in relative clausesSomething that occurs in various languages is that the words used to ask questions are also used to introduce relative clauses: in other words, a description that is a "sentence inside a sentence", as in
the man who I saw yesterday.
In these cases, French uses
qui for the subject and que for the object. For example:
L'ami qui vient demain...The friend who's coming tomorrow...L'homme qui m'a aidé.The man who helped me.(
qui is the subject of '
vient'/'
aider')
L'ami que je vois ce soir...The friend who I'm seeing tonight...L'homme que j'ai vu hier.The man who I saw yesterday.(
que is the object of '
vois'/'
ai vu': notice how there's another subject,
je, as a clue that
qui/
que can't be the subject in this case)
However,
qui is still used for the object of a preposition:
L'ami avec qui je sors ce soir.The friend who I'm going out with tonight.Notice that in standard French, avec qui is not split up, whereas in English the usual formula is to split up who ... with. Some French speakers might actually sometimes say "...que je sors avec", but this is definitely non-standard, would be consider "uneducated" by many speakers, and would be avoided in more careful speech and writing. For more details about this construction, see Ball, R. (2000) referenced below.[1] A more formal definition is that the subject is the part of the sentence that the verb "agrees" with.
Further readingFor an overview of the standard question forms with
qui, see
Price (2007), A Comprehensive French Grammar
, pages 194 onwards.
For information about various non-standard question forms and relative clauses that occur in colloquial speech, I recommend
Ball, R. (2000), Colloquial French Grammar
. See pages 26-55.
. In case you're not familiar with the series, the Instant Immersion software offers a range of audio and video-based material aimed at beginner to intermediate learners.
. This would appear to be an excellent deal that I wanted to bring to the attention of users of the site, since they may be interested in language-related software. Unfortunately, this offer does appear to be only on the English version of the software (i.e. it can perform speech recognition and text-to-speech on English, but not other languages; other language versions of the software are available, but not with the offer at present). Still, it's well worth knowing about.
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