Welcher

Welcher is a German word that functions as both an interrogative determiner and a relative pronoun. It means "which" or "what kind of" and is used to select one or more items from a known set. Like other determiners, it is inflected for gender, number, and case, producing a range of forms.

In its interrogative use, welcher asks a question about a specific choice. Common questions include: Welche Farbe magst du? (which color do you like?) or Welcher Tag passt dir besser? (which day suits you better?). The neuter form welches is used with neuter nouns, as in Welches Buch liest du? In everyday speech, speakers often prefer simpler forms such as der/die/das in relative clauses, but welcher remains standard in formal or precise contexts.

As a relative pronoun, welcher introduces clauses describing a noun from the preceding clause. The form agrees with the noun it refers to, but in contemporary German, der, die, or das is more common in everyday writing and speech. Example: Der Mann, welcher dir geholfen hat, ist mein Nachbar. More typical: Der Mann, der dir geholfen hat, ist mein Nachbar. In formal writing you may also encounter phrases like in welchem Fall or mit welchem Ziel where welcher is inflected for case and gender.

Declension (selected forms): nominative—welcher (masc), welche (fem/pl), welches (neut); accusative—welchen (masc), welche (fem/pl), welches (neut); dative—welchem (masc/neut), welcher (fem), welchen (pl). Genitive forms are less common in modern usage, often replaced by prepositional phrases such as von welchem.

Etymology and related forms: welches, welche, welcher belong to the welch- family and are related to other question words like wer, was, and wie, used to specify items within a known set.