ShmoopTube

00:05

[Dino and Coop singing]

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Have you ever met someone who seemed to use a hundred words just to say the simplest thing? [Guy saying hello in lots of different languages]

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The sort of person who might say they “do love to indulge in the occasional slice of

00:23

frosted dessert” instead of simply saying that they, uh… like cake? [Waiter looking confused]

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Usually, it's better to get to the point using as few words as possible.

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And there's no better way to keep things short and sweet than with relative pronouns.

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So… what's a relative pronoun? Is it…a pronoun you have to share bunk beds with?

00:41

Uh, no. In this case, the word relative does refer to a relationship, but it's the relationship [Guy on the bottom bunk, with the word pronoun bouncing on the top bunk]

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between a clause or phrase being connected to a noun or pronoun. [Coop pointing at a blackboard]

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Usually, a relative pronoun takes the form of one of these: who, whoever, whom, whomever, [The words being written in a list]

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that, which, when, where, or whose.

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Okay…you still might have no idea what we're talking about, so… let's dig a little deeper. [Shovel digging in dirt]

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Take a look at Tommy here.

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Now instead of calling Tommy, well, Tommy… let's try and use one of our relative pronouns [Boy smiling]

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to make a statement about Tommy.

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First up… “who.” So let's say...

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“Who likes swimming.”

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Um… doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? [Tommy looks confused]

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That's because it's a dependent clause. It depends on the rest of the sentence, but as [Dino pointing at a blackboard]

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it stands, it’s an incomplete sentence. No good.

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In order for it to make sense, we'd want to say “Tommy likes swimming.” [Tommy jumping into the pool]

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Much better.

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Now what if we also wanted to say that Tommy is a boy, just in case there was any confusion.

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The kid does like to paint his nails, after all. [Tommy's hand with pink painted nails]

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Here, we would say...

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“Tommy is a boy.”

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So we've got...

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“Tommy is a boy.” and “Tommy likes swimming.”

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Two perfectly fine sentences. So… where the heck does our relative pronoun come into

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the picture?

01:50

Well, suppose we wanted to combine the two sentences into one sentence.

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We would use a relative pronoun to say...

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“Tommy is a boy who likes swimming.”

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Voila! There's that dependent clause from earlier, but this time it has the first part [Arrow pointing to the dependent clause]

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of the sentence to depend on.

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Instead of having two separate sentences to say two separate things, this relative pronoun

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allows us to say two things in one sentence, shortening everything and making it a whole [Someone picking up a packet of Rolaids]

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lot easier to digest.

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Although the Rolaids probably will help, too.

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Take a look at some other examples here... [Guy with the Rolaids after eating his cake]

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“Star Wars is the movie that everyone is talking about.”

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“My friend has a little brother who is annoying.”

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“Larry has a brother whose house is inside of a giant lobster.” [The sentences being written out]

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Each uses a relative pronoun to make the sentence shorter and more to the point. [The relative pronouns are circled]

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Now if only you could teach your Great Aunt Rose to get to the point. [Aunt Rose saying a really long sentence]

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There’s a reason everyone calls her “Ramblin’ Rose”… [Everyone else looks bored]

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