Welcome to Series English, my name is Antonia Romaker.
And today I'm going to tell you about the difference between 'which' and 'that',
as well as the difference between 'who' and 'that'.
So I'm going to talk about relative pronouns
and I want to make sure that you do not confuse these words.
Because sometimes you cannot use 'that'
and in other cases you are supposed to use just 'who' and so on.
Let's get cracking and let's, well, try to clear things out
and get rid of this mess.
First we are going to talk about the difference between 'which' and 'that'.
So they are usually equally correct in a sentence.
For example, 'I need the book that you borrowed.'
Or 'I need the book which you borrowed.'
Both these sentences will be equally correct,
so here we are dealing with a restrictive relative clause
'And what is that?' - you might ask yourselves.
Well, let me explain. A relative... a restrictive relative clause
is a clause which contains essential information or important information
about the noun that comes before it.
In addition if you take it out it will affect the sentence.
Or the sentence might not make sense at all!
Like 'I need the book.' What kind of a book?
What are you talking about?
Let's take a look at a couple of examples.
Well, this is turning into such a hassle for me....
And with that, I had reopened the door that I had successfully closed years ago.
I think Alan will become the yardstick against which all future boyfriends will be measured.
What future boyfriends? No no, I th... I think this could be, y'know, it.
Really?
Notice that in these sentences we do not need commas.
So as for punctuation you should be very careful here - no commas.
Notice that. Well in addition in this type of sentences
you are not... you can use 'which' or 'that'.
By the way you can also use 'whose', 'who' or 'whom'.
So the number of relative pronouns, which you can use
in this type of sentences is the following, so we can use the following:
'that', 'which', 'who', 'whose' and 'whom'.
OK, and now let's discuss the second type of relative clauses.
Here we are going to talk about non-restrictive relative clause.
In this case we are talking about some extra information,
which is not that important, it's just additional information.
And well it can easily be left out without affecting the meaning
or the structure of the sentence. So it's not important.
Non-restrictive, not important, additional, extra information.
In this case we should use commas, we are supposed to use them.
It's a more or less strict rule.
In addition we cannon use 'that', we use 'which', 'who', 'whose' and 'whom'.
No 'that', never, be careful here.
So for instance, 'The book, which I lent you,
had kept me on the edge of my seat till I finished it.
So as you can see, we can just simply leave this part out,
we can say: 'The book had kept me on the edge of my seat till I finished it.'
Now a couple of extra examples from the TV series.
...regular lamps.
What? Come on, it's not like... I'm asking for this girlie clock or anything,
which, by the way, I also think is really cool.
Once again you should use commas here, do not forget that.
No 'that' and commas.
Now let's discuss the difference between 'that' and 'who'.
It is very peculiar,
because, on the one hand, we can use 'that' instead of 'who' sometimes,
but... let's get to it.
First of all, generally when we talk about people we should say 'who'.
So 'people who are close to me...' and so on.
And when we use 'that' usually we talk about things,
like 'the pan, that belongs to me...' and so on.
Yeah, so things and people, however there's no strict line, so to say.
Because sometimes we can use 'that' instead of 'who',
especially when we talk about people in general, like a class of people.
For example, 'The women that focus on their career tend to have no family of their own.'
So I'm talking about a whole class of women, a whole class of people.
In this case I can say 'that', 'the women, that focus on their careers.'
Well, in addition, usually when you substitute 'who' with 'that'
our speech becomes a little bit colloquial or informal.
So in this case we can talk about abilities and characteristics
of individuals and groups of people.
Speaking about individual people, like someone in particular,
if we use 'that', this is very informal.
As for groups of people and the whole class of people, it's not that informal,
you can even sometime use it in a formal situation.
However to be on the safe side, it's better to use 'who'
whenever you should say something of the kind,
this particular idea, when you should use a relative pronoun
and you are talking about alive creatures, namely people, not animals.
In this case to be on the safe side use 'who',
then you will definitely... you won't make any mistake here.
However if you want to sound informal, careless, colloquial you can use 'that'.
So all in all the bottom line here is that you should be consistent.
So just stick to one rule and... do it.
However my personal advice is to use 'who'.
Then you won't be wrong whenever.
So you won't be wrong EVER.
OK, by the way, however, once again I should mention
that some great writers, classical writers I should say,
use 'that' in this particular situation,
for example Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens,
they use 'that' instead of 'who' sometimes.
So even if you use 'that' instead of 'who' it won't be a mistake.
However if you want to sound British and
if you want to sound 100% formal, then say 'who'.
OK that's it, that's everything I wanted to teach you today.
I hope that now you understand the difference between 'which', 'that' and 'who'.
I guess that we'll continue discussing personal... sorry, relative pronouns.
But that's it for today. Do not forget to like this video,
so that I could actually see that you liked it.
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I will really appreciate that, and I will enjoy answering your questions.
So stay tuned, keep up! Study English and Russian with me at this channel.
And hope to see you soon! Happy Russian and English practice! Bye-bye!