That

That is one of the most frequent words in English. In fact, we can say it is several words. It’s a pronoun in ‘that’s my cat’, a determiner in ‘that cat is mine’, and an adverb in ‘English isn’t that difficult.’ It can also be used as a conjunction to join sentences, as in ‘I think that English is very easy.’
When that is a conjunction, it is often left out in informal speech – mostly after verbs like say, know, or think:
I think (that) English is easy.
She said (that) she was happy.
You know (that) I’m right.
In ‘This is the music that I love,’ that is a relative pronoun – and it can be omitted too:
    This is the music I love.
We can’t omit it in ‘She’s the girl that works here,’ because it’s the subject of ‘works’ (‘that’ = ‘the girl’ the girl works here.)
But we often leave relative pronouns out when they are the objects of verbs:
The house (that) I like is very expensive.    (‘that’ = ‘the house’ I like the house.)
The story (that) you told me wasn’t true.    (‘that’ = ‘the story’ You told the story.)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Confused or confusing?

Go home, walk home