"which" = 'who'

[Spanbock/Svoboda-Spanbock]

If she was dead, maybe it was a slip? Dead people aren't exactly
persons in the same way.

On Sep 7, 2011, at 12:15 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "which" = 'who'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Eyewitness to Carson City IHOP shootings, on CNN: "I saw a lady
> which had
> slumped over on the table."
>
> Guy (on phone) otherwise well-spoken, sounds white, not young. But
> not old
> enough to be a speaker of Middle English, either.
>
> I used to see this occasionally in freshman themes more than twenty
> years
> ago. It would not occur to me in ten million years to use "which" in
> this
> way.
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
>
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