That and which replacing who/whom?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Annie
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Except there is no right or wrong… different regional dialects around the world use words differently and language is constantly evolving. There’s no state mandated “royal academy of English” that regulates the language (as exists with some languages / countries).

I was taught in school that “ain’t ain’t a word”. Except it is, you elitist snobs 😉… it’s very much a real word in real use in certain dialect of English. African American Vernacular being one such example.
 
Last edited:
Well, arguably it became a Protestant language, but it obviously started as a Catholic one! Modern English owes about half its vocabulary to the French of the Catholic Norman invaders…
 
I had a teacher tell me that ain’t is the contraction of am not, used instead of saying amn’t (which I tended to say :o). I must have been afraid my mother would add that to her List, tho, as I never did use ain’t. We seem to say aren’t instead.

Amn’t I going with you?
Ain’t I going with you?
Aren’t I going with you?
 
twf said:
I was taught in school that “ain’t ain’t a word”. Except it is, you elitist snobs
Click to expand...
Teacher/librarian reporting for duty… I frown on your rationalization. 😉

Anyone can use any words they want, but it doesn’t mean people won’t secretly judge you for it. Which is usually pretty innocuous, but the biggest example I can think of for where it would have a serious impact on someone’s life is when someone’s trying to get a job. Especially a job where communication skills are important, and/or you’re dealing with the public. Then no one’s going to care about “Oh, that’s just their vernacular–!” and look at the fifty other nifty things about that person. They’re going to skip over that person and find someone who understands how formal communication works, regardless of how casually they may communicate with friends and family. But most people who are habitual “ain’t” users don’t know how to switch it on and off… because it’s a habit.

One of my favorite lines from My Fair Lady–
Prof. Higgins: “You see this creature with her curbstone English, the English that’ll keep her in the gutter 'til the end of her days? Well, sir, in six months, I could pass her off as a duchess at an Embassy ball. I could even get her a job as a lady’s maid or a shop assistant…which requires better English.”
Click to expand...
 
GordonP said:
The rock which hit me was large.
The rock that hit me was large.
…
In sentences of this type, I personally use “that” exclusively, and very rarely “who” or “which”. Microsoft’s grammar checker also uses this rule, so if you are using Word with the grammar checker on, it will correct “who” and “which” to “that”, even though they are not incorrect. Other writers like using “who” and “which” instead of “that”, and that’s perfectly fine, too. It’s a matter of taste and habit.
Click to expand...
Separate from the whole who vs. that/which debate, it’s worth noting that ‘that’ and ‘which’ are not interchangeable. ‘That’ indicates an essential clause and ‘which’ indicates an inessential one. Using the two interchangeably will confuse the reader, since they lead to different meanings. An excellent example, from Writer’s Digest is:

Our office, which has two lunchrooms, is located in Cincinnati.
Our office that has two lunchrooms is located in Cincinnati.

These sentences are not the same. The first sentence tells us that you have just one office, and it’s located in Cincinnati. The clause “which has two lunchrooms” gives us additional information, but it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence. Remove the clause and the location of our one office would still be clear: “Our office is located in Cincinnati”.

The second sentence suggests that we have multiple offices, but “the office with two lunchrooms” is located in Cincinnati. The phrase “that has two lunchrooms” is known as a restrictive clause because another part of the sentence (“our office”) depends on it. You can’t remove that clause without changing the meaning of the sentence.
 
This has no doubt been mentioned, but it drives me nuts:
“This is the first time GordonP has posted — let’s welcome them to our community!”

Nothing against Gordon P, but he is not a “them.” This is a ploy to avoid deciding what sex Gordon is. Sometimes, of course, you can’t tell, since someone’s name may be FaithfulFriend or some such. But they could use “him or her” in that case.

Am I the only one that finds this bothersome?
 
Last edited:
stpurl said:
Don’t forget possessive wrongs such as "the Jone’s family, “The Miller’s”, and also the loss of the Oxford comma as other examples of how egregiously bad the average person’s grammar is these days.
Click to expand...
I was taught by the good Irish sisters that the Oxford comma is optional unless it is necessary for clarity. This was decades ago, not recently.
 
Viki63 said:
Am I the only one that finds this bothersome?
Click to expand...
It doesn’t bother me when it’s used in a situation where you don’t know the person’s gender. Substituting “he or she” can become comically cumbersome. For example:

I was walking behind someone on the street and they dropped their phone, so I called out to them.
vs.
I was walking behind someone on the street and he or she dropped his or her phone, so I called out to him or her.
 
Last edited:
Wampa said:
I was walking behind someone on the street and he or she dropped his or her phone, so I called out to him or her.
Click to expand...
Collins Dictionary, they, usage:
It was formerly considered correct to use a masculine pronoun such as he, him, or his to refer to people in general, as in everyone did his best, but it is now more common to use they, them, or their, and this use has become acceptable in all but the most formal contexts: everyone did their best. This use of they, them, and their to refer to people in general can even be found in some definitions in this dictionary when other gender-neutral wording would be excessively convoluted.
Click to expand...
 
What I would do in that case is use “his or her” once, and then switch to the generic “he – his.”
Like this: I was walking behind someone on the street and he or she dropped his phone, so I called out to him.
 
Wampa said:
Separate from the whole who vs. that/which debate, it’s worth noting that ‘that’ and ‘which’ are not interchangeable. ‘That’ indicates an essential clause and ‘which’ indicates an inessential one. Using the two interchangeably will confuse the reader, since they lead to different meanings
Click to expand...
Whoa … this is a superstition. The Fowler brothers suggested that such a distinction would be valuable, but in fact this is a rule that doesn’t work. Here is Professor Pullum:
There is an old myth that which is not used in integrated relative clauses (e.g. something which I hate) and that has to be used instead […] It is completely untrue. The choice between the two is free and open
Click to expand...
From:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000918.html

He goes on:
Do I need to go on? No. The point is clear. On average, by the time you’ve read about 3% of a book by an author who knows how to write you will already have encountered an integrated relative clause beginning with which. They are fully grammatical for everyone.
Click to expand...
Arnold Zwicky points out that the problem, if there is one, is a problem not of word choice but of punctuation:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002146.html
 
Hmm, that’s interesting. I haven’t heard that argument before.

I can tell you that making the which/that distinction is standard practice in editing nowadays (I am an editor for a major news service).

And I guess the main thing I’d point out is that sometimes the meaning is clear either way. Gordon’s “The rock which/that hit me was large” fits into that category; readers will understand the meaning with either word. However, in some cases, the word choice does result in two different sentences with different meanings, though I do note Zwicky’s point about punctuation.

As an editor for the last three years (and a news writer for 3.5 years before that), I will say that writers often only see the meaning they intend in their sentence; whereas an editor (a fresh set of eyes) sometimes will see that a sentence has two potential meanings and can make the slight change necessary to ensure that the reader hears what the writer intended.
 
Last edited:
Viki63 said:
What I would do in that case is use “his or her” once, and then switch to the generic “he – his.”
Like this: I was walking behind someone on the street and he or she dropped his phone, so I called out to him.
Click to expand...
I was walking behind a person on the street that dropped a phone, so I called out.
 
Last edited:
Wampa said:
As an editor for the last three years (and a news writer for 3.5 years before that), I will say that writers often only see the meaning they intend in their sentence; whereas an editor (a fresh set of eyes) sometimes will see that a sentence has two potential meanings and can make the slight change necessary to ensure that the reader hears what the writer intended
Click to expand...
I can say (as a former editor) that I absolutely agree. Also (as a former editor) I sympathise with editors who are castigated by linguists like Professor Pullum because their style books shy away from usages which, although perfectly grammatical and idiomatic, are almost guaranteed to provoke letters of complaint from the more crusty members of the audience. I have been the recipient of too many of those letters myself. 🙂

Still, outside the columns of the press, it does no harm to demythologise the language, especially to scupper those rules which seem designed to confuse and socially embarrass people who, if left to their own devices, are perfectly and naturally capable of making themselves understood in their native tongue.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top