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Jan. 28, 2007 Brian and I are having a little good-natured duel, nothing very serious I assure you, but it gives me an excellent opportunity to point out some of his grammatical blunders, like the one in the following sentence: "On a shore, where small waves lapped, and some birds gathered on a nearby wire, he and her stood and watched the horizon mingle with the sea." This sentence is reminiscent of the sudden racket of a dump-truck during the performance of a delicate string quartet. There are five pairs of problematic personal pronouns in the English language: I, me; he, him; she, her; we, us; they, them We say, "He stood". We say, "She stood." Therefore, we say, "He and she stood." We don't say "Him and her stood," "He and her stood", or, "Him and she stood." Whichever pronoun is used when the subject is singular is used also when the subject is compound. Similarly, we would say, "I saw him and her." We would not say, "I saw he and she," "I saw he and her," or, "I saw him and she." These are very common mistakes, not only among children and foreigners, but also among adults. Even Prince Charles has a hard time, as I recall. I guess the King's English is just not good enough. Another example of using the wrong case of a pronoun that one often encounters is something like, "This law was meant for we the people." Of course, it should be "us the people". We would never say, "This law was meant for we." Barbeito has another pronominal breakdown in the following sentence: "Personally, I got the feeling in the past ten years that Robin Williams, though everyone knows whom he is, is underrated as an actor because he did so much comedy." Apparently, Barbeito thinks that "whom", which should be "who", is the object of the verb "knows". The fallacy can be seen if we propose the sentence, "I know him is dead," which, of course, should read, "I know he is dead." "He" is the subject of the subordinate clause, and the whole clause is the object of the verb. We say, "Who is he?" We don't say, "Whom is he?" So we should say, "Everyone knows who he is." However, "whom" is correct, when it fulfils the place of the direct object in the subordinate clause, as in, "I know whom they saw." A point that even careful writers miss appears in the sentence, "I know whom they say committed the murder." It should be "who they say", because the sentence from which the clause is derived is, "They say who committed the murder," which obeys the first rule that I mentioned. These subtleties are difficult, but not impossible, to grasp. These mistakes are trifles to be sure, but they strike a very discordant note with the more literate reader, who may be inclined to take a condescending attitude towards the author. If Barbeito aspires to literary greatness, he should acquire more pronominal fluency. I recommend that Barbeito furnish himself with a college-level grammar of the English language, concentrating on some of the fine points. An excellent one is A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik. Though the authors are English, the 1779-page volume covers British, American, Canadian and Australian variations. The book is expensive, but it can be found in most public libraries. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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