Are there relative pronouns in Chinese?

Question

Are there words for relative pronouns, for example: The man, **who** was walking to the shop, was tall. Is there a Chinese word for the bolded "who"?

Answer 1

Good question. It is one of the typical difference of sentence order between Chinese and English. Please notice that Chinese always puts adverbials and attributions such when,where,how...before the headword, instead of English which is always behind of.

刚走进店里的(那个男人）很高。

(The man) who was walking to the shop, was tall.

Answer 2

There is not a particular word for relative pronouns in Chinese. What we do is to put the description before the thing being described, and link them together with 的 (de.)

Your sentence can be translated into:

那个刚走进店里的男的很高。

Let's build the sentence together:

"男的" (man)

"刚走进店里" (just walked in to the shop)

"刚走进店里" (just walked in to the shop) is a description of "男的" (man.) Therefore, let's link them together with 的：

“刚走进店里的男的" (a man who just walked in to the shop)

Since he is not a random man, but a particular one, let's add "那个" (that) to the sentence:

"那个刚走进店里的男的" (the man who just walked in to the shop)

Finally, this particular man is tall. Le't add "很高" (very tall) as the predicate of our sentence:

"那个刚走进店里的男的很高。" (The man who just walked into the shop was tall.)

Hope that helps!

Answer 3

谁（she,shui)=who,whom