Pretend

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maverick88

#81148 Mon, 14 Mar 05 02:56 PM

Which ones are correct here?

#1 It's him who is trying to pretend to be intelligent
#2 It's him who is trying to pretend being intelligent
#3 It's him who pretends as if he were intelligent

I'd say #3 and #1 are OK.
What'd you think?

Thanks

maverick88

Joined on Mon, Nov 22 2004

Israel

Regular Member (695)

An English learner

pieanne

#81171 Mon, 14 Mar 05 04:29 PM

Hi again, Mav!
1. is correct
but the others are not.
You cannot use "pretend" with "as if", the verb already has that meaning: to pretend = to make as if.
To my knowledge, the only possible construction with "to pretend" is "to pretend to be".
Maybe someone will be more helpful than I am...

pieanne

Joined on Thu, Jan 20 2005

South of France ...But I'm Belgian!

Veteran Member (7,512)

I'm glad to help, but I'm not a native! And please excuse my typos...

Verbs, Constructions

maverick88

#81178 Mon, 14 Mar 05 04:44 PM

Ohhh Ok Anne, thanks

By the way I edited #3 and wrote 'he' instead of the typo 'here'
lol...

What do you think about 'It's him who pretends he were intelligent'?

maverick88

pieanne

#81186 Mon, 14 Mar 05 04:53 PM

I'd say "he's the one pretending to be intelligent"/"he's the one who pretends to be intelligent"

pieanne

Sweazey

#81187 Mon, 14 Mar 05 04:54 PM

It is he. In this instance the pronoun must be in the nominative or subject case. We commonly say It's him; however, it is grammatically incorrect.

Sweazey

Joined on Mon, Mar 14 2005

New Member (04)

Nouns, Pronouns, Nominative

nona the brit

#81257 Mon, 14 Mar 05 10:59 PM

Yes in theory, but native speakers do not really say 'it is he' or 'it is she' or 'it is they' or 'it is I'. It is seen as old-fashioned or rather pretentious and is likely to raise a bit of a laugh.

nona the brit

Joined on Wed, Sep 22 2004

England

Veteran Member (11,355)

The name says it all.

MrPedantic

#81260 Mon, 14 Mar 05 11:13 PM

Yes, 'it is he!' does have a melodramatic air.

For the original sentence, maybe:

'He's the one who's trying to look intelligent...'
'He's the one who wants to look intelligent...'
'He's the one who's always pretending to be intelligent...'
'He's the one who thinks he's the brainbox round here...'

But it would require quite a strange context: A is accused of pretending to look intelligent, and deflects the accusation onto B instead. Unusual.

MrP

MrPedantic

Joined on Tue, Oct 12 2004

Veteran Member (12,053)

...opella forensis / adducit febris...

khoff

#81271 Tue, 15 Mar 05 12:20 AM

Mr. P. - I think you have inadvertently introduced a complication, albeit an intriguing one. In the original query, someone was pretending to BE intelligent. We can understand why someone might pretend to BE intelligent. But you have someone pretending to LOOK intelligent - ("A is accused of pretending to look intelligent") I think this was just a slip of the tongue/ pen/ keyboard on your part but I couldn't resist pointing it out. Why would anyone bother to pretend to LOOK intelligent - and how would they go about it? (Pretending to wear thick glasses and carrying around a pretend dictionary?)
I realize this is not relevant to the original question and would have e-mailed it to you directly had I known how - feel free to delete it from the board if you want to.

(This post was edited in an attempt to pretend to try to look intelligent)

khoff

Joined on Sun, Mar 6 2005

Denver, Colorado, USA, Earth

Senior Member (2,571)

Native speaker of American English (but not a grammar expert)

MrPedantic

#81281 Tue, 15 Mar 05 01:16 AM

You're quite right, khoff! Thank you!

Robinson Crusoe could 'pretend to be intelligent' on his own; but to be able to 'pretend to look intelligent' ('to give the impression of being intelligent'), he would need a Man Friday.

I wouldn't dream of deleting your message, by the way (I especially liked the thick glasses) – please carry on posting!

MrP

MrPedantic

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