Grammar Corner

'Which' or 'Where'? - by Professor Mayfair

Q. What is the difference between where and which? Why can I say Australia is the country where kangaroos live; but I can’t say Sydney is the city where hosted the 2000 Olympic Games? (Eda, from Turkey)

Good question Eda as it is one that many students have problems with. Actually, the explanation is very simple though for some reason it is not one that you will find in most course books.

Generally, course books will tell you that we use where to talk about places in defining relative clauses, but we use which to talk about things, as in the following: - 'That's the hospital where I was born. ' Here we use where because a hospital is, of course, a building, a place. - 'An ambulance is a vehicle which drives people to hospital in an emergency. ' Here we use which because an ambulance is a thing, not a place.

However, neither of these models explains why we can’ t say 'Sydney is the city where hosted the 2000 Olympic Games.' That is because we CAN use which to talk about places when the place is the subject of the clause, but we can never use where as the subject of the clause because it actually means in which. Thus, the correct sentence about Sydney would be 'Sydney is the city which hosted the 2000 Olympic Games' because although Sydney is a place, in this sentence it is the subject of the verb to host.

Using this model, I wonder if you can work out what the missing word is in the following sentence: -

That’s the hospital _______ burnt down in a fire last year.