Hi !

1 ( A ) one of my friends didn’t come to my party , did he ?

1 ( B ) one of my friends didn’t come to my party , did one ?

1(A) sounds right to me Fikry :-)

1 ( A )

I can’t approve of the phrasing of 1(A) either but, clearly, “he” is a pronoun and “one” is not, so it’s very difficult to use “one” at the end of the sentence in that manner.

Still, 1(A) assumes that the listener would have some idea who “he” is, as a specific individual, and not just “one of my friends” (which isn’t even gender specific and could include women).

1A with a modification…. Instead of a comma I would use a period and make “Did he?” a complete separate question. Of course, “Did you see him?” would be even better or “I don’t think one of my friends came to the party did he?”
That being said… language is not my strong suit… I do however value clear communication.

In modern English we use ‘they’ to refer to a person whose gender hasn’t been specified. As the question is very general and it isn’t clear whether the friend is male or female we would actually say:

One of my friends didn’t come to the party, did they?

If you say, ‘did he?’ the speakers are talking about a male person only.

hello!

thanx for your comments .

yes . 1 ( B ) sounds a little bit peculiar to me as well , but, truly saying , ‘one’ can be a pronoun used to avoid repetition. So, if the speaker refers to ‘one’ as a person irrespective of the gender , so, 1 ( B ) could be correct .

I’m sorry to disagree but 1b is not correct. I would never ever use this. I’ve never heard anyone in the UK use it and would correct any of my students who said it.

The use of ‘one’ in the UK is seen as rather archaic and is only used by a very small number of people nowadays. Usually older upper class people. Other people only use it for comedy value and do not use it seriously.

In conversation and informal writing ‘they’ is now used in place of ‘one’. I’d be interested to know if this is the same in the US.

Hey Corina !

sorry , I didn’t say that 1 ( B ) is definitely correct ; on the other hand , according to the grammatical rule concerning tag questions ( they ) seems strange in case the subject pronoun of the main sentence is singular . ’ one of ….’ refers to a person , male or female. Again ’one ’ and ’ ones ’ are still used as pronouns : ( I prefer that one over there ) ….. ( I like the green ones ) …. apples for example …..

fikry

Only if you’re the Queen of England :o) Joking aside, the only context in which 1B) might be used is if you were quizzing to the friend who didn’t turn up. “One of my friends didn’t come to my party. Did one?” (i.e. You didn’t come and why didn’t you?). It would be a veiled question but paradoxically quite an aggressive approach.

The inference of saying “one of my friends didn’t come to my party” is that a particular person didn’t turn up. “Did he?” clearly refers to a human (or at least a male animal), whereas “did one?” doesn’t make the same connection to a person or anything particular in the preceding sentence and your audience may well respond with “did one what?”

Sorry Fikry,

I would have to disagree too.

This is quite a nice web article on the uses of ‘one’.

It says ‘…. one can also function in an impersonal, objective manner, standing for the writer or for all people who are like the writer or for the average person or for all people who belong to a class’.

The first part of your sentence seems to me to be refering to a particular individual who is a friend, one person from within your friends i.e. not to any of the categories for which we can use the impersonal pronoun ‘one’.

The article also suggests that ‘one’ is considered pretentious in the US, but agreeing with Corina, I think it is archaic here in the UK too.

One simply doesn’t use it nowadays ;-)

Fikry
Sorry if my reply sounded a little strong. However, I think grammar rules can be misleading and do not always relate to what people actually say. This is one of these cases. In the Uk it is normal nowadays to use, ‘they’ to refer to a singular person when the gender of the person is not specified, as in the example above. In speech it is used all the time and sounds completely normal.

As you said, ‘one of….’ and ‘one’ and ‘ones’ are still used as pronouns. this is completely normal and is different to the usage described above.

@ Corina, I really am grateful for the information about ’ they ’ , it is ages ago since I last visited the UK .

@ Mair , your comment is always persuasive .thanx .