Where, were and we’re are homophones that are often confused by learners and native speakers of English alike. Here is a short guide to help understand the difference between them.
where
Where is an adverb; you use where to ask questions.
Where did you meet him?
Where‘s Anna?
Where are we going?
Where will it all end?
Where is also a conjunction.
People began looking across to see where the noise was coming from.
If he’s got something on his mind he knows where to find me.
I didn’t know where to start.
were
Were is the plural and the second person singular of the past tense of the verb ‘to be’.
You were the first person to arrive.
The manager complained that we were late.
Were is also sometimes used instead of ‘was’ in certain structures, for example in conditional clauses or after the verb ‘ wish‘. This is a formal usage.
He might withdraw if he were allowed to keep part of a disputed land.
He believes in capitalism as though it were a new religion.
we’re
we’re is a contraction, meaning that it is a shortened form of ‘we are’. The apostrophe replaces the missing letters when the two words are combined.
We’re meeting our friends later on.
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