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God has equipped you with an internal compass which if you listen to will tell you if you are living to your full potential.
Source: ect.org forum, topic: Does severe retrograde amnesia create a new soul?

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    I read it just fine, but I'm not a native speaker.
    – Damkerng T.
    Aug 22, 2014 at 15:00
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    It looks like the quote is mis-quoted - Where is the actual source? Your link doesn't give the source and version.
    – brentwpeterson
    Aug 22, 2014 at 15:20

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It is formally grammatical; the which is represented in both the the condition and the consequence clause. This might be a tad clearer if the condition clause were set off in commas, but that is not necessary with so short a clause and would not in fact be represented by comma-intonation in speech

...       if you listen to it it will tell you if ...
       ↓  ←  ←  ←  ←  ←  ← ↵ ↵
       ↓
... which if you listen to       will tell you if ...

It is, however, an absurdly mixed metaphor: how does one "listen to" a "compass"?

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  • @user08742 Yes it is.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Aug 22, 2014 at 15:37
  • @user08742 There are two its in the 'canonical' version (the first line of my illustration), both of which are represented by the which. That's not archaic at all; if anything, it's rather colloquial.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Aug 22, 2014 at 17:56
  • I'm afraid it sounds ungrammatical to me. I'm not sure in my version of English it is possible to move "it" forward into "which" even once (i.e. "which if you listen to" doesn't work. It sounds horridly mangled to me (even without, as you say, the mixed metaphor). But this may be a difference in dialects.
    – Francis Davey
    May 6, 2015 at 16:25
  • It definitely could have been written better. What do you think of "...which will tell you, if you listen to it, whether you are living up to your full potential."
    – Jeremy Nottingham
    May 6, 2015 at 16:31
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No, it's not grammatical.

which if listened to will tell you

Would be correct.

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  • I didn't downvote your answer, but I'm not sure if it has to be "if listened to".
    – Damkerng T.
    Aug 22, 2014 at 15:00
  • It doesn't have to be, but this is one way to do it which doesn't involve any restructuring of the surrounding sentence. Technically speaking I didn't need to give any example, having already answered the question.
    – user8543
    Aug 22, 2014 at 15:03

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