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I learnt an even better trick: don't use it. Or rather, only use it if you intend to go the whole hog and comply with all the pedantic, pseudo-latinate prescri
by Pitarou 13y ago
I learnt an even better trick: don't use it.
Or rather, only use it if you intend to go the whole hog and comply with all the pedantic, pseudo-latinate prescriptions of traditional formal English grammar.
"It is I."
"Bad grammar is something up with which I shall not put."
"This is an historic occasion."
And so on....
- sk5t 13y agoThat's an okay strategy if you're going for "maximin": the best possible worst result. More refined speakers of English will notice and take umbrage at your mistakes, but a wrong "who" is so much less irritating than a wrong "whom."
- phillc73 13y ago> "This is an historic occasion." What's wrong with this? I cannot think of another way in which to say this?
- Pitarou 13y ago"an" or "a"? It's a long story. If you've never had to deal with this quaint piece of British pedantry, count yourself lucky. But you can still sometimes here BBC journalists who say "This is an historic occasion." with both the "n" and the "h" pronounced clearly.
- meepmorp 13y ago> Or rather, only use it if you intend to go the whole hog and comply with all the pedantic, pseudo-latinate prescriptions of traditional formal English grammar. The who/whom I/me distinction isn't a pseudo-Latinate grammatical prescription - it's the last vestages of overt case marking in English. An + words starting with "h" is a phonological side-effect of h-dropping in some dialects. The preposition stranding thing, though, is pseudo-Latinate prescriptivism. That and the supposed wrongness of split infinitives are my two biggest annoyances with "proper" grammar.