Relative pronouns recognition

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.