How to distinguish a pair of homonyms Who’s and Whose
In this lesson, you can overcome any confusion you feel about the meanings and usage of these two often-confused words Who’s and Whose
Hi, I’m Rebecca. Today’s lesson will be talking about some more commonly confused words in English. These words are normally called / homonyms. A homonym is a word which sounds the same as another word, but has a completely different meaning and very often in different spelling.
For you it’s really important to be able to differentiate between these words / because when you make a mistake like that, they are usually pretty basic words, so you want to make sure that you don’t wanna loose points in essay or exam for making a mistake with words that are fairly simple.
OK? So let’s look at two, that’ll often confused by ESL students and sometimes / even by native English speakers. OK? Here we are…!
The first one is Who’s and second one is also Whose. As you can see, they sound pretty much the same, but the meaning is completely different. The first one Who’s is the contraction of two words, Who is, right? While we say together, quickly, we say Who’s, examples of this can be questions, or statements. By questions, I mean something like this, “Who’s the boss?” “Who’s your friend?”
“Who’s in charge of this department?” In each of these examples, which are questions, we are really saying Who is in charge. Who is your friend? Correct? We could also take a sentence, and use Who’s, for example, He is the man who is in charge. He is the man who’s in charge of this department. He is the man who is or who’s in charge of this department.
OK? So that’s the first one.
The second one is also a relative pronoun, is called Whose.
And this one refers to something that belongs to someone. For example, it should.. another word is showing possession. For example, whose book is this? Whose house is this? Whose car is this? OK?
I’m the man whose a car is parked over there. OK? You see examples again with questions or sentences. All right? Now, we’re gonna do a little quiz, I’m going to say a few sentences, and you tell me / which one of these is being used in the example. All right? Let’s start with the first one;
Who’s the general manager of that company? Who’s the general manager of that company? OK? Which one is it? You know? Who’s the general manager? The first one! That’s right, OK? Who’s the general manager? Who is the general manager? Very good!
Let’s take the second one…! Let me introduce Mr. Williams who’s the main speaker at the conference. Let me introduce Mr. Williams who is the main speaker at the conference. Which one was that? Do you know?
OK? If you chose the first one, you’re right again, Let me introduce Mr. William Whose or Who is the main speaker at the conference. Ok? Let’s take one more. They are announcing the names of the passengers whose suitcases were lost. They are announcing the names of the passengers whose suitcases were lost. Which one is this time? Do you know? What do you think?
We’re trying to show possession, they’re announcing the names of the passengers whose suitcases were lost. The suitcases that were lost belong to the passengers, so we will use this one (pointing at Whose). OK? Good.
If you’ve got all of those right, you are on the right track, keep going. If you get confused, don’t worry. It happens, just practice a lot, write up different examples, get someone to check if you have teacher nearby or English speaker who you know. All right? And you will be able to get it.
When I come back in just a moment, I’m going to give you one last one, which is sort of like a review quiz, so maybe you can grab a piece of paper and write it out and I’ll be right back! See you in a minute!
Are you ready for a little quiz on what we’ve just done? Yes? OK. So, write this down; who’s the person whose the picture is in the paper? Who’s the person whose the picture is in the paper? One more time?
OK, Who’s the person whose picture is in the paper? While you write that down, I’m gonna write it on board and then we can compare. OK, do you have what I have? Let’s review, who’s the person as in who is the person. Whose, possessive, whose picture is in the paper? All right?
So the first one was Who’s the person / whose picture is in the paper? For me say paper of course, we mean newspaper. Lots of times we don’t say newspaper, cause it is a sort of longer word so we just say paper, and it means newspaper. Also kinda good for pronunciation practice, right?
Who’s the person whose picture is in the paper? You might wanna try that. You wanna try again? Who’s the person / whose picture / is in the paper? Good, all right! So I hope this lesson is helped you.
If you have any questions about this lesson or anything else to do with English, I will be happy to help you. Please comment, visit us at our website; www.EngVid.com See you there, bye for now!
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