0

Below is a sentence I wrote. Not sure if the relative clause here is natural.

It's rude to call a girl with whom I had only one talk by her pet name.

I wonder if it will be better to use a verb here.

It's rude to call a girl with whom I talked only once by her pet name.

Not quite sure where only should be put in this sentence, so I came up with another version:

It's rude to call a girl with whom I only talked once by her pet name.

Which one sounds more natural to you? Besides, if you have any other alternatives, please don't hesitate to share them with me.

Improve this question
1
  • Your construction leaves open the possibility that you were talking to someone else - rather than the girl herself - when you called her by her pet name. You could remove this ambiguity by using to address instead of to call.
    – Ronald Sole
    Dec 11, 2020 at 23:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

I think these are all good efforts and are all grammatical, though the phrase "by her pet name" sounds a little clumsy after the relative clause. I prefer your third option overall.

Although I don't know the context, I suspect the present perfect would be better in the relative clause:

  • It's rude to call a girl with whom I have only talked once by her pet name.

A couple of more natural suggestions:

  • It's rude to call a girl I've only talked to once by her nickname
  • It's rude to call a girl by her nickname when I've only talked to her once
  • It's rude calling a girl I've only talked to once by a nickname
Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .