BY all accounts, language evolves; it's organic. That being the case, may I use your Letters Pages to announce the death of the personal pronoun “who”?
Of course, it has long been ailing and in declining health but one had hopes it might stage recovery enough to have it removed from palliative care and re-introduced into the verbal community. Sadly, this has not happened and with contemporaneous luminaries as diverse as J Corbyn, T May, Auntie BBC, novelists and dramatists a-plenty-who-should-know-better and feature writers the length and breadth of our national press now using, ad infinitum, its androgynous, hermaphroditic relative, “that”, the case for a state language procession and ceremonial burial of this long-cherished qualifier is overwhelming.
One wonders what's next for the lexicographical catacomb: “number” for “amount”? “Fewer” for “less”? “I did” for “I done”? “I've gone” for “I've went”? “Could have” for “could of?
G McCulloch,
47 Moffat Wynd, Saltcoats.
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