You know the phrase, from Scooby Doo, “I would have gotten away with it to, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids…”?
Well, as I was running that phrase through my head (don’t ask, I do that sometimes with random phrases), I came up with a question.
Please comment here and tell me which of the following sentences sound good to you (try saying them out loud). Just comment with the numbers and “good”, “meh”, or “bad”.
1) People if it wasn’t for whom I would have gotten away with it
2) People I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for
3) People I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for them
4) People if it wasn’t for them I would have gotten away with it
5) People if it wasn’t for I would have gotten away with it
6) People if it wasn’t for who I would have gotten away with it
If you have a different way to say that, please leave it in the comments, too.
Posted on Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 3:54 pm. Categories: Linguistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can also leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to “If it wasn’t for those meddling kids…”
Frankie Says:
August 15th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
as “good” as any of these can be (they all, to me, sound like the ridiculous sorts of constructions I’d use in clear joking):
1) good.
2) good (the best of the lot, apart from ending with a preposition)
3) no. (”them” is redundant)
4) bad (”them”… doesn’t work.)
5) bad (is missing an object)
6) meh. “whom” in #1 is much better.
Danny Silverman Says:
August 18th, 2006 at 1:28 am
The only one I like is #1. #2 is a meh and the rest are bad.
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