Відносні займенники: як їх упізнати

Relative pronouns are the joining words that in English are "who", "which", and "that". In Latin they are forms of qui, and they knit two ideas into one sentence: "the man who sees", "the book which I read". At A1 your goal is to recognize these words on sight and know that a describing clause is beginning.

The nominative (subject-of-the-clause) forms come in three genders:

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
qui - who	quae - who	quod - which

Two more forms you will meet at once are quem (whom, masculine object) and quam (whom, feminine object).

Examples: Vir qui ambulat senex est. - The man who is walking is old. Femina quae cantat mater mea est. - The woman who is singing is my mother. Liber quem lego brevis est. - The book that I am reading is short.

For English speakers: in English we often drop the relative word ("the book I read"), but Latin keeps it, so expect a qui-word to appear. Do not confuse it with the question word quis ("who?"): a relative pronoun looks back to a noun just mentioned and adds information about it, while quis opens a question. The gender of the relative pronoun matches the noun it refers to, so quae points you back to a feminine noun and quod to a neuter one.