Language: Ending With A Preposition
By Daniel Miessler on February 24th, 2007: Tagged as Language | Writing
This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. — Winston Churchill
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I find that most people don’t give a crap about dangling prepositions anymore, but if I were to find myself around people that care about such things, I’d probably completely change the phrase so it sounds right:
“I will not put up with this sort of English.”
Comment by Tim — 2/24/2007 @ 8:38 am
It’s perfectly legitimate to end with a preposition (many times). The rule is mostly a myth when applied to English and likely stems from a time when English was taught with the more formal structure of Latin in mind. That said… A couple from Georgia and a couple from the Northeast were seated side by side on an airplane.
The girl from Georgia, being friendly and all, said, “So, where y’all from?”
The Northeast girl said, “From a place where they know better than to use a preposition at the end of a sentence.”
The girl from Georgia sat quietly for a few moments and then replied: “So, where y’all from, bitch?”
Comment by Jason Powell — 2/24/2007 @ 10:20 am
The problem may come from a lack of understanding about the Low Germanic origins of English syntax ( and, as Jason noted, attempting to use Latin as formation rubric against which that language is applied ). What Churchill is really doing is abusing the phrasal facility of English verbs.
In low German or Dutch you can say:
“Ik leg m’n boek neer”
or
“I lay my book down”.
The verb involved is the separable verb “neerleggen” meaning “to lay / set down”
Taking Churchill’s example, the verb involved is not “put” but rather “put up with” As we lack a facility for turning “put up with” into a solid, single verb ( like neerleggen ), I’ll use _-es, à la programmer-eese.
Comment by Steven G. Harms — 3/1/2007 @ 10:38 am