LET'S SPEAK ENGLISH:
Broadcast: Monday, July 10 1939 at 9:00 PM

Sixth Talk of New Series - Pronouns

I. Use of Pronouns,

II. Personal Pronouns
a) The First Person : I
b) The Third Person : He, She or It

III. Relative Pronouns:
a) Who
b) Which
c) That.

IV Demonstrative Pronouns:
a) These
b) Such
c) Same.

V. Indefinite Pronouns:
a) Some
b) Any
c) Either
d) One
e) Everyone
f) Others.

TRANSCRIPT: SIXTH TALK - PRONOUNS

A pronoun is a word that's used in place of a noun. 'I' and 'you' are both pronouns. 'I' is a very useful pronoun: so is 'you'. I really don't know how I could get on without 'you'.

'I' is used in place of the person who is speaking at the moment : 'you' is used in place of the person spoken to. Think how complicated life would be if there were no pronouns! Instead of saying 'I love you', I'd have to say 'The person who is now speaking loves the person spoken to'. You'll agree that's not very romantic.

Of course, sometimes you use the noun deliberately, instead of the pronoun, for greater emphasis. There was once a man who didn't like eating spinach. He said, "I don't like spinach: I never eat spinach: if I once ate spinach I might like spinach: but I don't like spinach." He could easily have used the word 'it' instead of 'spinach' : but the repetition of the word 'spinach' emphasises the point of the story - the absurdity of not liking something you've never tasted.

Now there are various kinds of pronouns. The personal pronouns are 'I', 'we', 'you', 'he', 'she', 'it' and 'they'. 'I' and 'we' are in the first person: 'you' is in the second person; and 'he', 'she', 'it' and 'they' are in the third person.

Do you know how to define the first person? I'll tell you. It's 'Adam'. When you knock at the door and someone asks 'who's there', don't say 'It's me'. The proper thing to say is 'It is I'. 'It is I' is really a shortened form of saying "It is I who wishes to come in". You can't say "It is me who wishes to come in". So you say "It is I".

A teacher once asked a school boy to correct the sentence "It was me who broke the window". The school boy didn't want to get into trouble, so he said, "It wasn't me who broke the window".

The same rule applies in the plural with the pronouns 'we' and 'us'. You shouldn't say "It's only us": you should say "It's only we".

There was a thief who made this mistake when he was stealing eggs from a hen-house. The owner heard a noise in the hen-house and called out, "Who's there ? " The thief said, "Only us chickens". Of course, he should have said, "Only we chickens". Then the owner wouldn't have noticed that there was anything wrong.

Now the pronouns in the third person can be divided into masculine, feminine and neuter. HE is masculine: SHE is feminine and IT is neuter. A man is masculine; so you say 'he'; a woman is feminine; so you use 'she'. When do you use the neuter 'it'? I suppose when you're talking about a corpse.

You also use the pronoun 'it' when you talk about a child, because a child can be either a boy or a girl. But you must be careful when you use 'it' with two nouns. If you've got rheumatism, don't say that when you massage your leg it vanishes. Everyone will think that 'it' refers to your leg and that your leg, not the rheumatism, vanishes. That would by a pity. You've got such nice legs.

Now 'who', 'which', and 'that' are relative pronouns. You use WHO when you want to refer to someone. For example you can say "I know a British official in Palestine who writes English, Arabic and Hebrew". You can say it all right, but no-one will believe you.

The relative pronoun 'who' is used only of persons : the relative pronoun WHICH is used only of things and animals; You can talk, about the man who sells vegetables: but it's the shop which sells vegetables. Some vegetable shops in Palestine, however, have very curious signboards. There's one in Jerusalem, a tiny place, with just room for the owner and two or three sacks. Outside is a large board reading "Chamber of Commerce of Vegetables". It should, of course, have been "Vegetable Dealer".

A member of the Brighter English League has sent me an advertisement printed by the owner of another vegetable shop. The owner apparently knew French and sold vegetables both wholesale and retail, which in French is 'en gros et en detail'. So he translated it into English as 'on gross and in detail', instead of 'wholesale and retail'; which just shows that he was a Ping.

Now there's a difference between the use of the relative pronouns 'which' and 'that'. If I say I will wear no clothes that will distinguish me from my fellow men, I mean that it will not be the clothes which will distinguish me. I'm being modest. But if I say I will wear no clothes, which will distinguish me from my fellow men, I mean that I can be distinguished by the fact that I wear no clothes at all. Then I'm not being modest.

In fact, I'm doing what a German doctor told me to do when I went to see him the other day about a pain in my chest. First he said 'expose yourself' meaning 'please undress'. Then he wanted me to take a deep breath and said 'inspire', which usually means to give someone an inspiration. Then he said 'expire', which means to die. But I didn't, and here I am.

Now we come to the demonstrative pronouns, such as THESE. You can ask in a shop, "Have you any other stockings? These are too dark". Here 'these' is used instead of the phrase 'The stockings I have here'. But be sure you're in a shop that only sells stockings, and not in one of those little shops that sell everything. I know one in Tel Aviv which has a notice saying that it sells "Stockings and other musical instruments".

By the way, if you want to have your stockings invisibly mended, I can tell you of a good place to go to. You'd never know it if you saw the notice outside the shop, because all it says is 'Artificial Stoppage'.

'These' is a word which must be kept close to the noun it refers to and not allowed to go off on its own. There's an Army Sergeant's Mess in Jerusalem which arranged a dance some months ago. They sent me an invitation which read, "The tickets for the dance are 25 piastres each, including refreshments. These should be taken some days in advance". I took the refreshments some days in advance: but when I got to the dance itself, I was as hungry as ever.

Talking about some days in advance will you do me a great favour?

Please don't say "In these days" when you mean "Nowadays". Thank you so much.

SUCH and THE SAME are also demonstrative pronouns. You don't use them with the word 'that', and say 'such that' or 'the same that'. You use them with the word 'as', and say 'such as' or 'the same as'. For example you say 'Wild animals such as lions and tigers'.

Once I was an examiner in an examination in Jerusalem and set a general knowledge paper in which I asked the candidates to name five wild animals found in Palestine. One girl obviously knew nothing at all about wild life in Palestine. She bit her pencil for a long while and then wrote down "wild horse, wild cow, wild donkey, wild cat and wild chicken". I gave her high marks for originality.

Now we come to the indefinite pronouns such as SOME and ANY. 'Some' is used when you're talking in the affirmative: 'ANY' is used when you're talking in the negative. You don't say 'I haven't seen some': you say 'I haven't seen any'.

I heard a nice story the other day about the restaurants in England that are run by the firm of Joseph Lyons. There are hundreds of these restaurants in London and the larger towns. Once a foreign visitor in London became very hungry: so he went up to a policemen and asked, "Are there some Lyons about?" The policeman looked a trifle surprised, but he was very polite and said "No, Sir. I haven't seen any". He was speaking quite correct English too; he didn't say, "I haven't seen some": he said, "I haven't seen any".

Another indefinite pronoun is EITHER, which means one or the other of two. 'Either you or me'. Sometimes, however, the choice between one person or the other is decided in advance, as in the case of the man who said to his wife, "My dear, if either of us should die, I shall go and live in Paris".

Now we come to the pronoun ONE. I may tell you that this is one of the best broadcasts to which you have ever listened . Don't you believe me? All right then; switch off if you want to; I don't mind. If you use the pronoun 'one' in a sentence, you must go on using it throughout the sentence. You can say 'It is nice for one to have one's hair brushed by one's mother'. Or you can use the pronoun 'you' throughout and say 'It is nice for you to have your hair brushed by your mother'. But you can't mix 'you' and 'one' in the same sentence and say 'It is nice for one to have your hair brushed by one's mother'.

Talking about hair, I saw a young man the other day who wore his hair much too long. He looked almost like a girl and I'm sure he wore his hair in a net at night. I'm never quite sure whether these Ionghaired people are men or women and I don't know whether I should address them as 'Sir' or 'Madam'. So I do what the phrase-book says and start 'Sir or Madam, as the case may be'.

The pronoun 'one' is in the singular. So is the pronoun EVERYONE.

You shouldn't say 'everyone should do their best' but 'everyone should do his best'.

In the Government sometimes it's hard to know what it's best to do, so you just cover up your uncertainty with one of those ambiguous phrases like 'sent to you for necessary action'. This leaves the other man to decide what is the action required.

I once saw that phrase in a letter sent by a station master about a man who'd got killed. The station master wrote 'When jumping off the train he fell under the wheel so I sent the body to the hospital for necessary action'. You can't blame the station master; he was only doing his best.

The last pronoun is OTHERS. You can only use 'others' when you're talking about persons. For example, you should be polite and respect the feelings of others. Have you noticed how polite Palestinian Arabs are when they talk English ? That's because they often translate from the Arabic. When you say 'Thank you' to an Arab, he replies 'Welcome'. Sometimes he says stranger things. Once I said 'Thank you' and the young man replied 'Never mind'.

As you can only use 'others' about persons, when you talk about things you must say 'other things'. For example I can say that I lost my watch, my pen and some other things. I can't say I lost my watch, my pen and some others.

In the earthquake of 1926, I was living out in an orange grove near Jaffa. and lost quite a lot of things when bits of the house fell down. It's useful to know beforehand when there's going to be an earthquake. In England, you can buy postcards with a picture of a donkey. Its tail is made of wool and the postcard is used as a barometer. When there's dry weather, the tail is stiff and stands up: when there's going to be rain, the tail hangs down. I once saw one of these postcards with the following explanation. "If the tail stands up, it'll be fine : if the tail hangs down, it'll be wet: if the tail falls off, it's an earthquake: if it grows again, it's a miracle".

There's going to be a miracle, so I'm told, tomorrow. The six broadcasts on "Let's Speak English" including tonight's talk will be on sale tomorrow at all book-stalls. How they're going to get them out in time, I really don't know. But the Editor of 'Jerusalem Radio' assures me that he'll manage it. If so, he must have sent them off by post last month. Good night.