Relative adverbs | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

Hey Grians! Today we're going to talk about three of the relative adverbs in English, which are where, when, and why. And this over here is Peggy the Dragon. We're going to use the story of Peggy the Dragon in order to figure out how to use these relative adverbs.

You may be looking at these words and thinking that they look an awful lot like question words, and you're right! They are question words, but you can also use them to ask a question. Like, uh, "Where are you from?" Because we use the word "where" to figure out where stuff is in space. So, you know, "where" figures out place.

So, Peggy could respond and say, "That is the cave where I grew up." And you can see that "where" here is not being used in a question way; it's actually connecting the clause "I grew up" to "cave." This is why we call this a relative adverb because the word "where" modifies the word "grew." It's "I grew up where," and it also connects this whole thing to "cave" because where did Peggy grow up? A cave. It connects this whole chunk to the rest of the sentence, to the sentence being "That is the cave."

We use the word "when" to ask questions about time. So, if I asked Peggy, "You know, you're a dragon. When did you learn to breathe fire?" Because all dragons can breathe fire, she would say, "I learned to breathe fire when I was 10 years old." So again, we're using this word "when" to connect these two ideas: "When did she learn to breathe fire?" "When she was 10 years old." And technically, "when" is an adverb that modifies "was."

Finally, we use the word "why" to figure out reasons for doing stuff. So, if something strange were happening in the countryside and I asked Peggy, "Oh mighty dragon, do you know why it is raining fish?" Peggy could say, "I don't know why that's happening." So again, we've got these two clauses: "That is happening" and "I don't know," and "why" connects and relates them. "Why" is modifying "is happening" here.

There are other relative adverbs. "While" is another way to say "when." "When," which is archaic and nobody really uses it, is another way to say "where." If you're familiar with Romeo and Juliet from Shakespeare, you've probably heard the word "wherefore," you know, as in "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father, refuse thy name," etc. That's an old-fashioned way of saying "why."

So we don't really say "wherefore" anymore, and we don't really say "when" anymore. But "while" is another way to say "when." Where you ask about place, when you ask about time, "why" is for reasons. These are the relative adverbs of English. You can learn anything! David out.