Timeline for Is the question "people from what other countries are you in touch with?" grammatically correct?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 3, 2020 at 9:20 | comment | added | Jack O'Flaherty | @Cardinal Your suggestion works, and it's not too awkward. | |
| Jun 3, 2020 at 7:14 | comment | added | Cardinal | What about: From what other countries are you in touch with people? Also, I don't understand why there are two downvotes on this answer. | |
| Jun 1, 2020 at 23:32 | comment | added | Micah Cowan | @JackO'Flaherty yes, sorry - I should've been clearer. This is what I was hinting at when I said "the semantics are slightly different". One important difference is that a precise answer to my exact question might include multiple answers per country, whereas the original (and PhilPerry 's correction) asks no such thing. | |
| Jun 1, 2020 at 23:17 | comment | added | Jack O'Flaherty | @MicahCowan That does ask about the people, rather than the countries, but the latter would probably be included in the answer. | |
| Jun 1, 2020 at 19:41 | comment | added | Micah Cowan | I believe that "What people from other countries are you in touch with?" is also an agreeable way of phrasing it (the semantics are slightly different, but the same basic meaning is conveyed). As to the original, I would be hard-pressed to come up with an established "general rule" being violated, but pretty much any native English speaker will agree that it is not grammatically correct. Sometimes grammar is just dictated by "you just can't do that" :) | |
| Jun 1, 2020 at 18:40 | comment | added | Jack O'Flaherty | @PhilPerry That does sound better, at least it's possible, maybe in a movie where a government agent is questioning someone, just before applying the thumbscrews. :-) | |
| Jun 1, 2020 at 18:38 | comment | added | Jack O'Flaherty | @urnonav Maybe "ungrammatical" is too strong, but it's not something I would ever expect a native English speaker to say. | |
| Jun 1, 2020 at 18:06 | comment | added | Phil Perry | It's hard to put a definitive answer on why the original phrase People from what other countries are you in touch with? sounds ungrammatical, but it surely does sound awkward. You are in touch with people from what other countries? sounds better to me. | |
| Jun 1, 2020 at 17:12 | comment | added | urnonav | Curious why you think the original answer is ungrammatical. | |
| Jun 1, 2020 at 16:45 | vote | accept | Dmytro O'Hope | ||
| Jun 1, 2020 at 16:33 | history | answered | Jack O'Flaherty | CC BY-SA 4.0 |