00:00 - [Voiceover] Hello grammarians, we're gonna talk 00:02 about that versus which but I would like 00:04 to start off by saying that in the study of grammar 00:06 there's basically this long, on-going fight 00:10 between two camps and it's between the prescriptivists, 00:14 who believe that language has concrete rules 00:17 that need to be abided by, 00:19 and the descriptivists, who also believe 00:21 that language has rules, 00:22 but see language as more subject to change 00:25 than the prescriptivists would like. 00:27 Now I find myself to be right in-between these two camps 00:31 which frequently makes me feel like I want to stick out 00:33 my hands and say, "You guys stop fighting. 00:35 "You're both right." 00:37 All of this is to say that Bryan Garner, 00:39 the prescriptive author of my main usage manual, 00:42 Garner's Modern American Usage, 00:44 is not a fan of the word which. 00:46 He thinks it's ruined more sentences 00:49 than any other word in English through its overuse. 00:53 On the other hand Geoffrey Pullum, one of the editors 00:56 of my descriptive Cambridge Grammar of English 00:58 says that this position of Garner's is utter bunkum 01:02 and nonsense and that upon review of the entire body 01:05 of English literature, the rules about which and that 01:08 are largely made up. 01:10 This is why it's so hard to get a good straight answer 01:13 to that versus which on the Internet 01:15 because everyone is arguing at once. 01:18 Because half the people say that there are definite rules 01:21 and then half the other people say, 01:23 "The rules don't matter dude." 01:24 But a prolonged study of both camps has led me 01:28 to determine that there are distinctions in usage. 01:31 There is a time to use that and a time to use which. 01:34 From this entire argument, 01:36 from these generations of just bickering, 01:39 I have sussed out two distinctions. 01:42 Distinction one, that is bad with commas. 01:45 Distinction two, which is bad with people. 01:52 So, let's start with distinction number one that 01:54 that is bad with commas. 01:57 Now Bryan Garner says that most of the time, 01:59 nine times out of ten in fact, he says 02:01 if you want to use a relative pronoun 02:04 and you're trying to choose between that and which 02:06 you should probably use that and the one time out 02:09 of ten that you do want to use which, 02:11 you're supposed to use a comma first. 02:14 So, a comma, which, as in, 02:16 "The carrot, which was orange, was tasty." 02:20 So you can write it that way with this little comma-net, 02:23 but you can also write it without, as in 02:25 "The carrot which was orange was tasty." 02:27 Now the distinction between these two sentences 02:29 is the distinction between non-restrictive 02:33 and restrictive relative clauses. 02:35 Because the carrot, comma, which was orange, comma, 02:38 was tasty means that you could take 02:40 out the comma-bracketed clause 02:41 without changing the meaning of the sentence. 02:43 "The carrot was tasty." 02:44 But, the carrot, no comma, which was orange, 02:47 no comma, was tasty that 02:49 which part is a restrictive clause. 02:52 The fact that the carrot is orange is essential 02:54 to the sentence. 02:55 "The carrot which was orange was tasty," 02:57 doesn't preclude the idea that there might have been 02:59 a non-orange, non-tasty carrot involved somewhere else. 03:03 However, if we try to use that in a non-restrictive way, 03:07 to say, "The carrot, that was orange, was tasty," 03:10 it, to me, and to other native English speakers, 03:13 that just sounds a little weird. 03:15 It's not ungrammatical, per se. 03:17 There's nothing about the word that or which that says, 03:20 "This is what it must be used for." 03:23 But, of all the combinations that could be made 03:26 using either which or that or commas 03:28 or not commas, that, with commas, 03:32 is the least common, and that is why to me, 03:35 as a speaker and writer of standard-American English, 03:38 it doesn't look regular. 03:40 And to try that once more, without commas, 03:42 now we have, "The carrot that was orange was tasty." 03:45 This is restrictive usage again. 03:49 And this one works. 03:51 So, number one works. 03:53 Number two works. 03:54 Number three is weird, and number four is fine. 03:58 So, the distinction here is that 04:01 that just doesn't play well with commas. 04:04 That's distinction number one. 04:07 Okay, so distinction number two, 04:10 which is bad with people. 04:12 So the way I like to remember this 04:14 is that I imagine a witch who does not like other people. 04:18 So I just imagine a kind of a cranky witch 04:21 who lives all alone in a house in the woods, 04:23 and anytime someone comes up to her house 04:25 and asks her if she wants a subscription to a magazine, 04:27 or does she want to come over for dinner, 04:28 she says, "Blah!", and she slams the door. 04:31 The which witch doesn't like people. 04:34 So the way this shakes out is that which 04:37 doesn't refer to people, 04:39 and that can refer to anything. 04:42 This is also really strange and it portrays a prejudice, 04:45 in English, toward human beings. 04:48 Check this out. 04:49 To prove this, let me throw some sentence fragments at you. 04:52 "The dog that I saw, the snow that fell, 04:55 "the woman that boarded the plane," 04:57 all of these are fine. 04:59 Let's try them again with which. 05:02 "The dog which I saw, the snow which fell, 05:05 "the woman which boarded the plane," 05:07 now, this to me, as a native speaker of English, 05:09 doesn't sound right. 05:11 It should either be who or that. 05:15 And again, this isn't because of some kind of rule 05:18 of official grammar. 05:20 This is just the way that the language has shaken out. 05:24 Which just doesn't have a connotation of human beings. 05:30 So that's the essential distinction. 05:32 That doesn't like commas. 05:34 Which is bad with people. 05:37 You can learn anything. 05:39 David out.