About relative pronoun

"My brother and I are driving from Stockholm, Sweden to the south of Norway. (We’re part Swedish, part Norwegian, so we live in Sweden, but our family has a summer house in Norway that my grandfather built.)"

In the part "our family has a summer house in Norway that my grandfather built." Is it ok to replace "that" with "which"? Any difference? Thank you.

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froggtongue · M

I think most English speakers would naturally use "that" in your sentence. But the word "which" is perfectly acceptable here too. It doesn't make any difference except in how it sounds.

corta24 · 41-45, M

@froggtongue Thanks a lot!

swirlie · F

@froggtongue
Incorrect.

SomeMichGuy · M

@swirlie The meaning is the same in context.

The person is not standing on a hill looking at a range of homes and saying, e.g., "The house which Wright designed is the low, flat one by the river."

We already know it's the writer's family home in Norway, not an unknown house in some vast constellation of homes.

swirlie · F

@SomeMichGuy
Who are you trying to convince, yourself or me?

corta24 · 41-45, M

@SomeMichGuy Thank you very much!

SomeMichGuy · M

@swirlie Your insistence that "the use of 'which' in the specific context is wrong", is wrong.

But my comment is not for you, it is for people who might think English is even more of a minefield than it already is.

swirlie · F

@SomeMichGuy
What is wrong is you changing the context of the original question to suit your mantra. Stick with what the OP wrote and stop pretending that you know better.

SomeMichGuy · M

@swirlie I didn't change the context.

Language has richness and is not the straitjacket which you suggest.

froggtongue · M

@swirlie you said i was incorrect. If you'd please, please tell me how so.

SomeMichGuy · M

@froggtongue She blocked me, bc she doesn't like being contradicted (I think I had previously blocked her).

She has it wrong.

This is language, and context is everything.

Use either and go on with your life.

swirlie · F

@froggtongue

The word "that" with a restrictive clause adds essential details and clarification, whereas the word "which" with a non-restrictive clause adds non-essential details and context. The operative words here are "essential" versus "non-essential" details.

A restrictive clause means that the information in the clause is necessary to understand the preceding noun.

For a restrictive clause which is the case in his quoted example, his use of the word "that" is therefore correctly used.

froggtongue · M

@swirlie so what i see here is it's up to the speaker on which he feels, if the information is essential or not.

swirlie · F

@froggtongue
No, its dependent upon how the clause in the question is written, not whether the speaker feels the information is essential or not.

If its essential according to it's author, then it is written as such which is how the original poster of the question constructed his question. He therefore made it's context essential which therefore requires the word "that".

What we are therefore dealing with is HOW he actually wrote his question, not how he COULD HAVE written his question otherwise to make the context non-essential, which would only then require the word "which" to make it grammatically correct.