Why is "el" not "lo" in the sentence below?
I found the following sentence in a book: "Llega a la parada del autobús, donde toma EL que va a la ciudad." Why is "el" not "lo?" Let me guess why I'm having this problem. It seemed to me we were dealing with a direct object, which would require "lo," but this transforms to "el" because of the following clause. Maybe. Thanks.
1 Answer
el que, la que, lo que (and the plural forms) are relative pronouns.
lo que referes to abstract things or unknown nouns that we have no way of knowing the gender of.
If, on the other hand, we know the gender of the pronoun's antecedent (the noun or thing that it refers to) then we must show concordance.
In your example, the antecendent of el que is "el autobús". ...where I take/catch the bus which goes to the city. el que=the one that, that which, etc.
If the relative pronoun had referred to the bus stop (parada) then it would have been la que.
