How to use the interrogative pronouns ‘qui,’ ‘que,’ ‘quoi,’ and ‘lequel’ in French?

Use the French interrogative pronouns qui, que, quoi, and lequel to ask questions:

• Use qui (meaning who) to ask about people.

• Use que (meaning what) to ask about things.

• Use quoi (meaning what) as another form of que in certain settings.

• Use lequel (meaning which one) to refer to people or things that have been mentioned already.

But have you ever heard someone use the phrase “c’est qui qui…” (meaning Who is it who...)? Or have you ever seen the pronouns auxquelles or duquel? If you’re curious, you’ve come to the right place! In this post, we’ll review how to use the interrogative pronoun qui as the subject and object of a sentence, how to use que as the subject and object of a sentence, when que becomes quoi, and how to use lequel, along with its contractions with the prepositions à (meaning to) and de (meaning of).

Are you ready? Allons-y ! (meaning Let's go!)

Use the French interrogative pronoun qui (meaning who / whom) to ask questions about people. You can use qui as the subject or the object.

Use the interrogative pronoun que as the subject or object of a sentence in French. We use que to ask questions about things or ideas, like you would use the word “what,” in English.

The interrogative pronoun que will become quoi in informal French sentences when it is placed after the verb. Look at the two sentences below. What do you notice?

Keep this rule in mind when forming your questions.

You can also use quoi as an interjection. To practice sounding like a native speaker and to learn more about using quoi as a French interjection, check out our activity sheet! Or, study this list of common French expressions using quoi.

Use que and qui with prepositions when the verb of your question takes a preposition, usually à or de. When you use verbs that take a preposition, you will use this preposition in combination with que and qui.

When you use a preposition with que, something magical happens...
✨ It becomes quoi! ✨

Qui with the prepositions à and de means "whom," but it does not change form like que:

Here is a list of French verbs with their prepositions that you might find useful.

So now you can ask “who,” “whom,” or “what” in French. But do you know how to say “which one”? Let’s learn about lequel!

Use the interrogative pronoun lequel (meaning which one) to refer to people or things that have been previously mentioned.

Why am I using laquelle in this example? Because this interrogative pronoun must agree with the number and gender of the noun it replaces. In other words, check if your noun is singular or plural, and masculine or feminine, and follow this table to choose the right form of lequel:

In my previous example, I was replacing une casquette (feminine and singular), so I used the interrogative pronoun laquelle.

Let’s try another example together:

Have you worked out which form to use here? Well done! Les clés is a feminine plural noun, therefore we replace it with lesquelles.

Before we wrap up, let’s review one last tricky part of using lequel. Sometimes, lequel will form a contraction with the prepositions that precede it. Let’s take a look.

Now, let’s review the main points that we have covered in this post.

In this post, we’ve covered how to use the interrogative pronouns qui, que, quoi, and lequel.
Recall the following:

1. Here is how to use qui / que / quoi:

   who	qui qui est-ce qui
   whom	qui qui est-ce que
   what	que qu’est-ce que qu’est-ce qui quoi*

2. When using a verb that takes a preposition, always keep the preposition before the interrogative pronoun (à qui, de quoi….

3. Here is how to use lequel:

   • Lequel refers to people and things that have been previously mentioned.

   • Lequel has to agree with the noun it represents.

   • Lequel takes different forms when used with the preposition à and de (auxquelles, duquel, etc.).

Ready to test your knowledge? Here’s an activity for you to practice French interrogative pronouns!