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Sunday, August 25, 2013

BRING ON THE 7th


 
That's LNP candidate Tony Abbott in the centre of a group of young soldiers who(m?) he joined for their morning PT session at the army barracks recently.
 
 It's terrific to have a future PM that gets out and about with the real people and at 55 can keep up with the young fellows.
 
He said :
"Terrific to be part of the team at Robertson Barracks this morning for a gruelling exercise session. These guys sign up and put themselves at risk so that the rest of us can be safe and free. I honour their service. "

Can't wait for 7th September.





5 comments:

  1. I have no idea about the politics but have to admire him as a person based on this - both in his action and words.

    As for the "who" or "whom," I'm not sure but I always try to insert something like "for" or "with" and see if it sounds better. "group of young soldiers with whom he joined"...what do you think?

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  2. I think "whom" has just about disappeared from our language today and although my knowledge of grammar is fading fast I think it fits here.(sounds right anyhow to my ear ) Thanks for the tip.

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    1. Sure thing. And anytime you have a suggestion for me I'll appreciate it. I agree people seemed to have stopped using "whom." I can understand why but like you say sometimes a phrase just sounds better. Apparently Hemingway thought so - "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

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    2. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was published in 1940 -- almost 75 years ago now. But one thing remains: Hemingway was right.

      It's "a group of young soldiers whom he joined" because the little modifying phrase "whom he joined" is in reality a subordinate clause -- that is, it has a subject, a verb, and an object of its own even though the whole thing modified "soldiers". So would you say "he joined I" or "he joined me"? Me, obviously -- a direct object needs to be in the objective case (a compound object confuses so many people, who end up saying, wrongly, "he joined her and I" when they should say "he joined her and me"). In this particular example, he joined whom (objective case), not he joined who (nominative case).

      It seems easy to remember to me, but that particular construct causes a lot of people a lot of anxiety.

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  3. Hemingway is dead and so is whom.

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