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01Hello!
02This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Meizhen in China about the usage of two words that sound the same.
03Dear Teacher, I have some question about the words whose and whose.
04I sometimes have confusion when I hear.
05I am not always sure what word I am hearing.
06Can you please share with me your advice?
07Thank you for writing to us, Meizhen.
08I'm happy to answer this question.
09The easiest way to know which word you are hearing is to listen for the words that follow it.
10We contract, or join together, the two words who is to make the contraction whose.
11Often, the next word you hear after whose is a verb, as in these examples.
12Who's going to help us?
13Who's making all that noise?
14Who's using this computer?
15Sometimes, you will hear a prepositional phrase or a noun phrase after the contraction whose.
16Who's in the office today?
17Who's the director of that film?
18Last, we can contract the word who with the verb has.
19So, the sentence, who has already seen this film, sounds like this.
20Who's already seen this film?
21Now, let's look at the possessive whose, spelled W-H-O-S-E.
22We use it to ask about who owns or has something.
23So, you should listen for a noun after the pronoun whose.
24Or, you can listen for the adjectives this, that, these, or those.
25For example, if we see a book on a desk and we do not know who owns it, we can ask either of the following questions.
26Whose book is this?
27Whose book is that?
28You can hear the noun book, and you can also hear the adjectives this and that at the end of the question.
29We use the word this if we are close to the book.
30If we are farther away from the book, we use the word that.
31We use the adjectives these and those for plural things.
32Whose shoes are these?
33Whose bags are those?
34We can also place the contraction whose and the possessive whose at the beginning of a noun clause.
35The noun clause begins after the main verb of the sentence, as in these examples.
36I want to know who's going to drive the bus.
37I want to know whose idea this was.
38You can learn more about possessive whose, including its use in relative clauses, in this Everyday Grammar on The Mysterious Word Whose.
39We hope today's lesson is helpful, Meijen.
40For our readers and listeners, do you have a question about American English?
41Send us an email at learningenglish at voanews.com And that's Ask a Teacher.
42I'm Andrew Smith.
// transcribed with Whisper AI — reading it is easy; catching it by ear is the skill
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