Them and those

[mineallmine]

My friend and I have had a disagreement about this. Her daughter found my daughter's glasses and asked me what I wanted her to do with them. I said 'Put them on her,' to which my friend responded to her daughter 'What Mineallmine meant, of course, was put THOSE glasses on her.' Sounds all wrong to me. I understand that she wants to stop her dd saying things like 'I love them glasses' but to my ear, my friend over uses the word 'those.' To me, the word 'those' is to indicate which ones you mean eg 'Which glasses will I put on Mini-mine? Those' in a pointing sort of way.

Who is right?

I'm with you.

These and those correspond to this and that presumably.

Them is accusative, ie the object of a verb.

I think.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will come along soon to confirm my theory and make me feel clever

To clarify, we have the sentence "Put them on her" which seems completely grammatical and unremarkable to me: "them" is a pronoun that stands in for a plural noun "the glasses".

The sentence "Put those glasses on her" equally sounds fine to me, emphasising a particular set of glasses.

Is it some over-correction because people don't like "Put them glasses on her" as it's not acceptable in standard English? (I think it arises in some dialects).

Brilliant, I knew I was right!

Brilliant, I knew I was right!

Yes, DadDadDad, we're in Dublin where there would be a lot of 'them glasses' so I understa

Whoops...

I understa

Terrible internet connect ion, sorry.

Yes, I understand my friend's desire for her children to have good grammar but I do NOT like to be corrected on my grammar

Terrible internet connect ion, sorry.

Yes, I understand my friend's desire for her children to have good grammar but I do NOT like to be corrected on my grammar