How would a native speaker say, 'which is' or 'that is'?


An English example would be, `'We have seen a lot of changes, which are good
for business.'` or a follow-up question in a casual conversation, `'..Which
is?'`

I was wondering if they have an exact word or phrase for this, or do they have
a similar concept?

Arigatou!




This type of noun-modifying clause is called _relative clauses_ (関係節 or 連体修飾節
in Japanese). The Japanese language has the same concept, but the word order
is drastically different. [This
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/14550/5010) is a quick starter,
but this is a difficult topic which can take months to get used to, so I
recommend reading your textbook.

(If you are already familiar with basic relative clauses and searching for the
name of this special type of relative clause, please read [this
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/35755/5010). Note that this is an
advanced topic to a beginner.)

As you will soon realize as you begin to learn this concept, Japanese relative
clauses must be placed _before_ the modified thing. Therefore, Japanese has no
direct equivalent of 'Which is...?' as a follow up question said at the
beginning of a sentence. Instead, you can just say
"[つまり](https://jisho.org/word/%E8%A9%B0%E3%81%BE%E3%82%8A)…?" ("That is...?")
to ask for the conclusive or summary statement.

