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"Tell me who she is."
"Tell me who your boyfriend is."
We usually reverse the order, so it becomes like that.
But I wonder whether "tell me who is the real man" also works because "tell me who the real man is" sounds like we have already known the real man and I am just asking about his name.
If my friend and I are going to arm-wrestle, and I say:
"Let's see who is the real man."
Is that correct?
Both structures are correct. And, more importantly, they are both understandable. The impact of the sentence (its implication) will, in this case, be more strongly affected by verbal emphasis when speaking, or by punctuation and context when writing, than by the sentence structure changes suggested.
Both structures are a subordinate clause, beginning with "who".
"An important aspect of wh-clauses," notes Geoffrey Leech, "is that they require the wh-element to be placed at the beginning of the clause, even if this means changing the normal order of subject, verb, object and so on" (A Glossary of English Grammar, 2010).
from here: wh-clause
Neither is a true interrogatory, in that the beginning "Let's see" sets up the emotion of the sentence to be declaratory. Because of this, I would likely not punctuate either form with a question mark at the end. I would use a period to terminate, or an exclamation point, as that would give us a sentence more commonly understood by a reader.
For a discussion of how one can vary traditional English usage, and still be understood, you might find Yoda Grammar to be of interest. It is quite a bit more extreme an example, but still may be useful.
"Let's see who is the real man."
In informal speech, this is very common (especially with shortened "who's" - probably much more than the inverted form), and it is unlikely that someone would correct you.
However, strictly speaking, this is not a question, so the order recersal is inappropriate; the gramatically corect form is "... who the real man is". If you were to use this sentence in formal writing (other than quoting infomal speech), it would probably be marked as incorrect.
Grammar:
No, it's not. Because embedded questions (those using interrogatives like 'who') are noun clauses, they follow the structure of a statement and not a question. So grammatically you can't say, "let's see who is the real man."
Meaning:
"Let's see what time it is" doesn't imply anything like 'we know the time but we want to see the digits.' Actually when you say "let's see what time it is" what I hear is "Let's see the answer to the question, 'what time is it?'" Like this example when you say, "let's see who the real man is" what I hear is "let's see the answer to the question, 'who is the real man?'". It doesn't imply anything but a simple noun clause which is originally a question transformed and then squeezed into a sentence. 😉
It really depends on how you say it though! Ofcourse you can confidently say, "let's see who the real man is" and then smile smugly and even point to yourself while saying it which means I'm the real man. In this case your body language and tone determined your intended meaning not the sentence itself.
A few examples of embedded questions with 'who the real man is':
I don't know who the real man is.
Could you tell me who the real man is?
I'm not sure who the real man is.
I wonder who the real man is.
We need to find out who the real man is.
So I recommend saying "let's see who the real man is" in a neutral or curious tone (and not fake BTW) if you don't want to imply anything to your friend before arm-wrestling. ☺
The word order in the reported question or a clause with who is usually Subject + Verb. When who in the clause is followed by the verb to be and it is the subject of the sentence, the sentence looks like the following :
Who is happy?- I don't know who (subject ) is happy. Compare: I don't know who came.
It was Thomas Jefferson, I think, who (subject )was the third president of the United States.
If there's a subject in the question it is placed in front of the verb.
Who are they?– I don't know who they are. Who is that man? – I don't know who tnat man is.
According to M.Swan , "when we report questions with who, what or which + to be + object, the verb be can come before or after the object."
Who is the champion? – Tell me who the champion is.Tell me who is the champion (Informal).
Both sentences are correct.
Let's see who the real man is. Let's see who's the real man.(Informal).
If a clause beginning with a question word (who, what, etc.) is not an actual question (but still expresses an implied inquiry), you can use the standard S-V-O order instead of V-S-O. You only have to use V-S-O order if your sentence ends in a question mark.
I'm wondering who that guy is that goes to the park all the time.
I'm wondering who is that guy that goes to the park all the time.
Who is that guy that goes to the park all the time?
Who that guy is that goes to the park all the time? (Sounds funny.)
If who, what, etc. is part of a clause that functions as the subject of a sentence then this doesn't apply (because this is not an implied inquiry anymore).
What you decide won't affect my opinion.
Who you think about doesn't matter.
I will start my answer by first scrutinizing how embedded questions are formed:
This is an interrogative sentence. The answer is, say, at x. x can be anything, any time.
So the answer to this question is:
Now see how in interrogative sentence when fills the gap:
Now in question the interrogative word - when is fronted, and subject-auxiliary is inverted -
Let's now form the embedded question:
Now let's focus on a similar sentence as the one OP quoted:
Both (ii) and (iii) basically mean the same thing, but structurally they are different. In (ii) X is the subject, but in (iii) X is in predicative complement.
Now we will form the embedded question based on sentence (ii)
Now we will form the embedded question based on sentence (iii)
So in OP's original sentence both the sentences are correct, and mean the same thing.
[N.B - Based on various corpus and google book search, I think Let's see who the real man is. is more common]
