Or is it “The monkey for whom I’m wondering if they can see my ears.”

or

“The monkey, regarding whom, I’m wondering if they can see my ears.”

or

“The monkey who I’m wondering if they can see my ears.”

All of them sound stupid.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    “The monkey of whose ability to see my ears I’m wondering”.

    Part of the issue is that the thing you’re wondering about needs to be a noun, but the verb “can” doesn’t have an infinitive or gerund form (that is, there’s no grammatical way to convert it to a noun, like *“to can” or *“canning”). We generally substitute something like “to be able to”, but it’s not something our brain does automatically.