“who is your father in the crowd?” Vs “which is your father in the crowd?”
Which is correct? What is difference in meaning between them?
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You did it exactly right in your second paragraph.– aparente001Apr 28, 2019 at 7:49
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'Who is your father in the crowd' sounds as if the father is in fancy dress pretending he is someone else. 'Which ?' (in this case) refers to the appearance of an image. It does not refer to the personality of the person.– Nigel JApr 28, 2019 at 10:04
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I can't see anything wrong with your first example. It is simply asking you to identify the person in the crowd satisfying the description "your father". Your second example is asking you to select from some range of people in the crowd.– BillJApr 28, 2019 at 10:36
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2 Answers
I think "Which" is the best interrogative pronoun here. You clearly are asking someone to choose from within a number of choices; and "who" doesn't convey that meaning. When you ask with "Who" the most natural answer would be about the identity of that person.
-Which is your father? -He is the man in white.
-Who is your father? -He is Dr. Peter Smith.
Take a look here. "Who" is never used for asking about choices.
When the words are used as pronouns, without nouns immediately after them, we generally use "who" for people. Like for example - "Who fainted ? "
But to represent the identity of a person / people , we often use "which". Here , from the whole crowd we have to identify his/her father. So, we should use " Which is your father in the crowd?" The answer could: " The man in short height and white shirt."
