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I'm not a native english speaker (so forgive me for my poor language skills in general :) ) and I'm puzzled by this "whose / which / of which" issue. I have a sentence like this: "BLAA is a project whose purpose is to build and...". To me it sounds that it should have which instead of whose. I was always tought that whose refers to a person and which to a matter, and based on that I would use which but all the articles I read about it seem to say that whose is the way to go. What to do? And please keep the explanations in KISS form ;) Thanks!

-Heidi

Heidi
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  • Whose is not limited to people, and never was. Where did you get that idea from? "A project whose purpose is" is correct, "a project which purpose is" is ungrammatical and makes no sense. You say all the articles you read about it say that whose is the way to go, so I have to ask: How many articles more do you want to read that all say the same thing? If you didn't believe all the articles you've already read, will you believe us? How can you ask "what to do" after everyone has clearly told you what to do? – RegDwigнt Jun 03 '14 at 08:40
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    A while back, in English class I was tought that generally whose (as it originates from who) relates to people and so on.. And to me it sounded like that it should be which, but then again as I said, I'm not a native speaker. From the articles that I read, I really couldn't find a case that matched mine or most likely did not fully understand the reasoning behind it. Most of the articles are written in very progressive / official English and as a non-native speaker this caused problems as well. Sorry for asking stupid questions, again and thanks for your blunt reply. – Heidi Jun 03 '14 at 09:30

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