: 'This one' as a pronoun 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

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John saw Mario again after three years, and thought that this one lost a lot of weight.

As Mark says, this example's not idiomatic in English. (Also, it would be "had lost".) However, this version would work much better:

John saw Mario again after three years, and thought, "This one's lost a lot of weight."

(I'd tweak the beginning to something like "John saw Mario again three years later", but that's a separate issue.)

In English, "this" is usually associated with some kind of closeness. If I talk about "this car and that car", "this car" is probably the one that's closer to me. If I'm comparing an episode of a TV show that just screened with one that screened last week, "this episode" will be the recent one and "that episode" will be the one further from me in time. If I talk about "this concept", it means something like "the concept that I was just talking about".

So when John is referring to Mario, "this one" can work - it means "the guy who is in my presence right now". But when it comes from an anonymous narrator, referring to Mario as "this one" wouldn't usually work, because it doesn't make sense for Mario to be close to the narrator.

It's a subtle point, and I'm not sure I've articulated it very well - maybe somebody else can explain this better?

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