Learning Farsi helped me understand this, they use this structure all the time.
beckstcw Send a noteboard - 15/05/2010 09:28:03 PM
It occurred to me today that people say "that which", as in "That which I am taking to work today" or some such. I've heard it before and I caught myself typing it and thought "waiiiit...you know that really just doesn't sound right."
Am I right in thinking that use of that phrase is grammatically incorrect?
Am I right in thinking that use of that phrase is grammatically incorrect?
I'd wondered about that myself.
Persian has a word "ke" which can mean "that" "who" or "which" when linking a descriptive clause to a noun or pronoun, and they seriously abuse that word so much that a single sentence can have three or four occurrences of it.
So in the phrase "That which I am taking to work today", "That" is a pronoun and "which I am taking to work today" is basically an adjective. It's not a complete sentence, kinda like simply saying "That thing" isn't a sentence. A complete sentence would be "That which I am taking to work today is very heavy."
At least that's how I understand it.
Grammar question
- 15/05/2010 07:57:21 PM
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It's correct, but not by itself. The "which" introduces a subordinate clause relative to the "that."
- 15/05/2010 09:18:07 PM
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mk, i thought it might be something like that (and what beckstcw said)
- 15/05/2010 09:37:38 PM
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Learning Farsi helped me understand this, they use this structure all the time.
- 15/05/2010 09:28:03 PM
599 Views
Spanish has the same.
- 15/05/2010 10:34:30 PM
507 Views