Relative pronouns

[msimpson801]

I have been reading a lot about relative pronouns from a few different sources and there seems to be loads of rules.Here are some of them.

"When the relative pronoun refers to a person and is in the direct object position, either "que" or "a quien" may be used."

"When the relative pronoun occurs after a preposition and refers to a person, "quien(es)" must be used."

el/la/los/las que can refer to people and things.When the relative pronoun used with a preposition use el/la/los/las que
there a loads,loads more that I haven't included

I am a beginner in Spanish would I be able to get by using the following general rules:

for people directly after a verb use - a quien(es)
for people after a preposition use - quien(es) e.g. con quien
for things directly after a verb use - que
for things after a prepostion use - el/la/los/las que

my main concern is to have a few relatively simple rules of thumb that will guide me when I am speaking.I cannot memorize rules about commas,distance between antecedent, or that el cual is more common in formal oratory and written Spanish.

Are my rules OK?

[wrholt]

This set of rules covers the majority of situations, and they are certainly enough to start with. It's a good idea to focus on a small number of rules at a time and get reasonably confident with them before going on to a new set of rules to learn.

[Rusty]

In English, we tend to use 'who' for people. That is not the norm in Spanish.
After the preposition 'con', it sounds OK to say 'quien', but not if 'cual' or 'que' follows it. In that case, you must use 'con el/la cual' or 'con el/la que'. Your simpler set of rules doesn't include using 'cual/cuales'. These are also used more than 'quien/quienes'.

The Spanish relative pronoun 'que' is used most of the time when you'd say 'who' in English. For example:

The man who left was the one who said (that) he couldn't wait.
= El hombre que salió fue el que dijo que no podía esperar.