There is a discussion - well hardly a discussion really, more of a question that has been answered - over at OEDILF about which/that.

Now I'm sure we all know, as has been pointed out over there, what the "rule" is.

To steal the example that they used there

You can drive the cars that are red.
There are some red cars. You can drive them and ONLY them.

You can drive the cars, which are red.
You can drive any of the cars and by the way they are all red.

That is introducing a defining (restrictive) clause.

Which is introducing a non-defining (parenthetical) clause.

So far so good, but it occurred to me that I have often heard people in casual spoken usage use which where according to the above rule that would be correct.

People do say

You can drive the cars which are red.

meaning

There are lots of cars, pick one of the red ones only.


Again, so far so good. Spoken English is a lot more casual about the rules.

It then occurred to me that I have never heard anyone use that in a context where the rule says use which.

In short we often substitute which for that but NEVER substitute that for which.

Does anyone have any idea why this should be or any other examples of confusable word pairs where we only seem to confuse them in one direction?

I link to this out of interest.

"less" can be used with count nouns and mass nouns, but "fewer" can only be used with count nouns

less people in the boat
fewer people in the boat

less water in the glass
*fewer water in the glass

I wouldn't say that there's any confusion though.

I knew there was another obvious example that I was missing. It was less/fewer.

Interesting article BTW. I always enjoy Language Log.

"Confuse" may have been a poor word choice. I was thinking of cases where there is a commonly accepted "rule" (which doesn't mean it's right or sensible) which is frequently broken in one direction but not the other. I think the examples make it clear what I mean anyway.

Another example that occurs to me that I have heard in both directions but MUCH more commonly in one is lend/borrow

I very often hear lend for borrow (Can I lend your pen?) but only occasionally hear borrow for lend (Borrow me a pen.)

And reading that back I noticed a "which" being used for a "that" right there, and completely unintentional. Just goes to show.

I think the British are in general much less observant of the that/which rule than their American cousins.

Yes, there are some prescriptivists here who go absolutely ballistic if you use "which" for "that" or "fewer" for "less than."

Goofy, we've had a few discussions here about "fewer" and "less"...here and here and here and here, for a few.

As you can see, my stance has changed on this as my language skills have matured. It is embarrassing to see what a prescriptivist I was.

quote:

I think the British are in general much less observant of the that/which rule than their American cousins.

Indeed. I get very annoyed that my Word spellcheck, although set to UK English, always highlights any instances where I use "which" without a comma and tells me I should have used "that".

And I usually ignore it.

Well, I get annoyed, too, and I am American.