Grammar

Question

I would like to know which is correct- Which country does he belong to? or To which  country does he belong?suresh

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Neither, Suresh. We do not 'belong to' countries; we are citizens of them:

Which country is he a citizen of? Of which country is he a citizen?

Or, more naturally:

Which country is he from?

Vsuresh · Answer

Thank you very much, Mister Micawber.

Actually I wanted to the know the position of the preposition. But eventually you have enlightened me on something I had not thought about all these days.

Thank you once again!

suresh

Sam1947 · Answer

RE: placement of the preposition, purists in formal writing would either reword the sentence to avoid the to at the end, or put the to at the first of the sentence. Either is actually grammatically correct, but I agree with MM about the language and his suggestions for alternatives.

There has never been a hard and fast rule against placing a preposition at the end of a sentence (although many teachers taught otherwise), although, there is frequently a more graceful way to say things. What one should not do is make an ackward construction just to avoid putting the preposition at the end. In formal writing, most think it is best to try to avoid putting the preposition at the end if there is a good alternative. In speech, most people just put the preposition at the end, and that is fine.

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