L'homme à qui j'ai passé un appel a répondu.

Breakdown of L'homme à qui j'ai passé un appel a répondu.

l'homme
the man (m)
qui
who
répondre
to answer / to reply
l'appel
the call (m)

Questions & Answers about L'homme à qui j'ai passé un appel a répondu.

Where does the à in à qui come from?
It comes from the verb phrase passer un appel à quelqu'un (to make a call to someone). In French, you can never leave a preposition at the end of a sentence like we do in English with 'the man I made a call to'. You must put the preposition right before the relative pronoun. Since 'the man' is a person, we use qui, giving us à qui (literally 'to whom').
Why use passé instead of fait for 'made' a call?
While English uses 'make' for phone calls, French uses the verb passer. The standard expressions are passer un appel or passer un coup de fil. If you translate word-for-word and say faire un appel, it sounds unnatural and a French speaker might think you mean a roll call or a formal appeal.
Since qui is before the verb, why doesn't passé need to agree with it?
In the passé composé with avoir, the past participle only agrees with a direct object that comes before the verb. Here, à qui is an indirect object because of the preposition à. The direct object is un appel (the thing being made), which comes after the verb. Therefore, passé stays in its default masculine singular form.
Why is a répondu all the way at the end of the sentence?
a répondu is the main verb of the sentence, and its subject is L'homme. The core sentence is simply L'homme a répondu (The man answered). The relative clause à qui j'ai passé un appel is just inserted in the middle to tell us exactly which man we are talking about.

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