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A friend of mine asked me if this sentence is correct: "And after all, it is with you than I want to be." My thought is that "than" is wrong, and the correct word is "that." Am I right? I told him I was, but he can't accept that he is wrong, saying "than" can be used in this sentence as well.

Benjamin Harman
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Diego Fernandes
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    The quote is so incorrect the intended meaning is entirely opaque. – Michael Plotke Jan 07 '16 at 19:48
  • I speak Spanish and Portuguese, so I was able to derive what he meant based on semantics and syntax. He basically said it in English how he would have said it in Spanish. Anyway, it's now corrected. – Benjamin Harman Jan 07 '16 at 21:13
  • Also, the more "normal" phrasing would be "After all, it is you that I want to be with." There used to be a prohibition by some grammarians about ending a sentence with a preposition, but that has pretty much been discarded. – WhatRoughBeast Jan 07 '16 at 22:47
  • @WhatRoughBeast : Yup. When I edited the question to make it coherent for the masses, I felt a bit iffy about leaving "and" dangling there like that. But that's what the boy actually said. And what the boy said is what the whole question's about. So you've just got to sometimes let things be. – Benjamin Harman Jan 07 '16 at 23:29
  • I suggested him "after all, you are the one that I want to be with." am I correct? – Diego Fernandes Jan 08 '16 at 02:11

2 Answers2

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You're right. When speaking, the correct way to say it would be:

"And after all, it is with you that I want to be."

The word "than" makes no sense. You could omit the word "that," and it still would make sense and mean the same thing. But you couldn't use the word "than" in its place.

Benjamin Harman
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The word than has one, and only one, use in English. It's used in the Comparative construction.
Period. If there is no Comparative construction (less/more X than Y, X-er than Y), don't use than.

That, on the other hand, has a large number of usages -- as a relative pronoun, as a demonstrative determiner, as a tensed clause complementizer -- and is far more common than than.

Community
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John Lawler
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