à qui vs. auquel form of relative pronouns

Question

I have read other explanations of à qui and the auquel forms of the relative pronouns and they are not interchangeable;  à qui  is used for people and the auquel form is used for things and animals.  I think this distinction should be corrected in your lesson and on the tests.

Maarten Kamp · Answer

TM,

you haven’t given your references, so it is impossible to comment on them. Can you post the links or quotes ?

However, wordreference disagrees, as does the Académie-Française in its discussion, and Robert.

As far as I am aware the lesson is quite correct - it seems unlikely the native speakers here are getting this wrong. My wife is a native speaker, qualified bidirectional English-French translator - she also agrees with the examples and comments on usage as they are given in the lesson.

It is correct however, that ‘ à qui ‘ can only be used for people, so in that sense the forms are not completely interchangeable.

See link below to Laura Lawless site as well.

https://www.wordreference.com/fren/auquel

https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9L0590

https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/lequel

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/relative-pronoun-lequel/