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I'm writing a story in English but I'm not a native. I’m a Brazilian Portuguese speaker. It bothers me how repetitive and ambiguous pronouns can be. In my language we can use the equivalent to ‘th...
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T12:53:20Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/47804 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Louisr
·
2019-12-08T12:53:20Z (over 4 years ago)
I'm writing a story in English but I'm not a native. I’m a Brazilian Portuguese speaker. It bothers me how repetitive and ambiguous pronouns can be. In my language we can use the equivalent to ‘this one’ instead of he/she/it etc. It’s less usual, but still sounds natural. But I don’t know how it sounds to a native English speaker. The only examples I found in English were archaic. Example: > John saw Mario again after three years, and thought that **he** (Mario, not John) lost a lot of weight. Does it sound weird if I write instead: > John saw Mario again after three years, and thought that **this one** lost a lot of weight. I wonder that something like ‘the guy’ could be used instead of ‘Mario’, but it would not sound good if Mario is a well known character by the reader. Of course I can use Mario again, but it doesn't work well in the sentence that concerns me.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-09-03T17:42:14Z (over 4 years ago)
Original score: 9