what
/ˈhwət/, /ˈwət/
pronounused in questions to ask for information or for someone’s opinion
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Examples
1. What color does a woman wear in this country when she marries, Mary?'
2. What time do you finish work?'
3. What is going on here?
4. What else makes the devil laugh?
5. What language should we speak?
when
/ˈhwɛn/, /ˈhwɪn/, /ˈwɛn/, /ˈwɪn/
adverbused when we want to ask at what time something happens
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Examples
1. What color does a woman wear in this country when she marries, Mary?'
2. When I do fieldwork, I always take photos.
3. When the lamp is off, the wax is slightly denser than the liquid around it.
4. When the fire happened, didn't the firefighters come?
5. When his ammunition ran out, he threw his gun at Pugliese.
where
/ˈhwɛɹ/, /ˈwɛɹ/
adverbto or in what place, situation, or position
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Examples
1. Where is that nice young woman?
2. The second technique is known as static rappel, where recruits utilize the tower's wooden face to perform a controlled descent.
3. This is a critical juncture where you have the power to stop your descent.
4. They opened free heroin maintenance centers, where addicts would be treated and stabilized.
5. Women over 21 can undergo a regular pap smear, where a sample of tissue is gently scraped from the lining of the cervix to test for abnormal cells.
which
/ˈhwɪtʃ/, /ˈwɪtʃ/
pronounused to ask or talk about one or more members of a group of things or people, when we are not sure about it or about them
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Examples
1. Excessive rainfall can dilute the salt in the water, which could kill the oysters.
2. What I do worry about is something else, which is a geopolitical cold war.
3. Some faithful friends of Stalin even admitted to having disloyal thoughts if not deeds, which was adequate sin to justify execution.
4. So we needed refineries, which were basically giant chemical plants.
5. So we're constantly making these determinations, which we're then rationalizing.
who
/ˈhu/
pronounused in questions to ask about the name or identity of one person or several people
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Examples
1. She had a son, who was eighteen years old at that time.
2. I learned a hard lesson today about the judgment and discrimination and retaliation against people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
3. Who comes up with these words?
4. For instance, in capitalist societies, deviant labels are often applied to those who interfere with the way capitalism functions.
5. Who were the subjects that bequeathed these pulses to us?
why
/ˈhwaɪ/, /ˈwaɪ/
adverbused for asking the purpose of or reason for something
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Examples
1. Teachers wondered why some students were good at math but other students were not.
2. One day one of the girls in her class said to her, "Miss Smith, why does a man's hair become gray before his mustache and beard do?"
3. 'Why don't we go to a warm room in my house for a talk then?
4. Why do we listen to her?
5. We explained why this should be our current calendar in our A new calendar for humanity video.
