student asking question

Why is she using "that" instead of "who" when referring to people? Can I also use "who" here?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Great question. You are correct in thinking that "who" is always used to refer to people, and "that" is always used when you are talking about an object. However we also can use "that" when you are talking about a class or type of person, such as a team or in this case "friends", so this sentence is still grammatically correct. You could also replace "that" with "who" here and still be correct. Ex: Is he the boy who you spoke to? Ex: Is the team that won the game? = Is this the team who won the game?

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