There, there, their and they’re

🏁 There can mean a place,

Put it over there

or that you’re saying something, like

There is a lot of rain today

so there are actually two different uses of there. 

Their means something belongs to someone or something, like in

Their car is really expensive.

They’re is just short for they are.

📲 💻You can use this link to a Google Form to check you can use these words in the right way.

🎯 💻  Want to try some tests?

http://www.better-english.com/easier/theyre.htm

https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/cw-there-their-they%27re-quiz.htm

http://a4esl.org/q/h/mc-ttt.html

https://www.grammarbook.com/grammar_quiz/their_vs_there_vs_theyre_1.asp

🚦These homophones cause a lot of problems for people, so this explanation will be a bit longer than usual. The first thing you need to know is that there are four of them, not three!

Here’s why:

There can mean a place, as in:

My car is over there.

You can remember this one easily as it already has the word HERE in it, which is also a place.

There can also be used when you are saying something, e.g.

There is a lot of wine in France.

or

There are better games on the Playstation 4 than the X Box One.

So, that’s two uses for the same word, which is why it can be confusing. The other ones are a bit easier when you know how to remember them.

Their always means there is something that belongs to more than one person, e.g.

Their house is in a very nice area.

or

Their computers are really old and still run Windows XP!

or

Their car is called a Tesla P100D, which is electric and very fast!

The last one is they’re, which is always short for they are. It’s the easiest to work out, because if you try to fit both words in to the sentence (you can call this the two words test) it will only still make sense if they’re is the right choice, e.g.

They’re going to see the latest Avengers film tomorrow. This would still make sense if you said:

They are going to see the latest Avengers film tomorrow.

So the two word test really helps.

If you remember these four different uses for words that sound the same, your English will be a lot more accurate.

🎓 The two versions of there are also known as homographs, because they sound and spell the same but have different meanings.