About the usage of which and that

I assume your concern is within the scope of 'relative pronoun.' Relative pronoun functions as pronoun and conjunction.

Use 'which' to replace non-person antecedent (The word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to, as the children in The teacher asked the children where they were going.)

1. I have a book. The book is on the desk

0That - That is used with restrictive phrases. Restrictive phrases are phrases that are essential to the sentence. 02br
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00Which - Which is used with nonrestrictive phrases. Nonrestrictive phases are phases that states non essential information. A phase is nonrestrictive phase if the phase can be from the sentence.02br
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00Examples:02br
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0 01i00which02i00 can also be used with restrictive meaning.02br
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00 These are the very pens which the president used to sign the bill.02i02br
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00 (And I believe you accidentally left out a comma in your last example.)02br
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00By the way, did you notice that you were responding to a

i have a question

which is correct

That is the house which my father bought. OR...

That is the house that my father bought.

please answer as sooooooon as possible

Thanks for posting that, Qwerty!:) (I am the one who was telling you to omit "which" and "that")

I was wondering why you can't omit them, wouldn't "That is the house my father bought" make sense?

My teacher once told us that if we could omit them, we should. (She wasn't a teacher, she was someone who was trying to teach English..

Hi Pucca

Yes, you can omit the relative pronoun in a restrictive clause when the relative pronoun is not the subject of the restrictive clause.

"The yogurt (that) I bought yesterday was already past its use-by date."

Thank you for answering, Amy! [F]

0But what about cases where 'which' or 'that' doest follow directly the noun they're referring to. For example: 'The visit to the zoo that we had postponed several times'? Would a native English speaker understand that we were postponing the visit, not the zoo:)?02br
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00 Thanks, natives, if you have time to answer!0-

0 .02br
00Of course. Communication in any language requires a certain amount of common sense. Extant zoos cannot be postponed.0-

The answer is:

That is the house that my father bought.

Explanation: That is used to represent a 'restrictive clause' (ie., very essential to that sentence). So, in this case when you ask the question who bought the house, the answer is 'Your Father' and no one else.

So, the conjunction 'that' is used here.