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.

40 points

None sound correct to me. Sounds like you’re trying to describe a specific situation.

Do any of these help:

  • “I’m wondering if the monkey can see my ears”
  • ”I’m wondering if that monkey can see my ears”
  • ”I’ve been wondering about that monkey and whether it can see my ears”
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11 points

The sentence structure suggests that in OPs sentence the monkey is the subject and part of the sentence is missing.

Like for example,

“The monkey – I’m wondering if it can see my ears? – is eating a banana.”

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8 points

All of these make sense. All the others seem like crazy talk.

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2 points

Could that monkey see my ears? I wonder to myself

Or, I wonder to myself ‘could that monkey see my ears?’ (maybe not ', maybe a comma? But anything is better than it imo)

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18 points
*

Is this a fragment of a sentence? Because it seems like an incomplete thought.

If there’s further information to come in the sentence with the monkey as the subject you could use brackets to indicate your thought and write…

“The monkey (about whom I’m wondering: ‘can they see my ears?’) did something or other…”

This isn’t strictly grammatically correct, but seems to be the most natural way it could be written and said without sounding weird.

Or is ‘monkey’ an answer to some other question and you’re adding that other information for context? If so, you could use a semi-colon.

“What’s bothering you?”

“The monkey; I’m wondering ‘can they see my ears?’”

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16 points

None of them are grammatically correct because none of them are complete thoughts let alone sentences.

All three try to specify the particular monkey by enumerating that it can see your ears but do no more.

Take away the description of the monkeys ability to see your ears and what you’re left with is “the monkey”.

“The monkey” isn’t a sentence.

If you are the subject and what’s happening is that you’re wondering if the monkey can see your ears then the sentence you want is “I’m wondering if the monkey can see my ears.”

If, as I suspect, you’re using “the monkey whose ability to see my ears I’m wondering about” as the subject of some larger more complex and cool sentence then you gotta lay out that part before someone can give solid grammatical advice.

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12 points

I’m wondering if the monkey can see my ears.

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5 points

if

whether

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4 points

Whether would be used if you ask ‘whether the monkey can see my ears or not’ i.e. when there are 2 stated options.

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2 points
*

There is an implicit binary choice here, so “whether” fits. Both work, although I, for one, prefer to use “whether” for binary choices and “if” when there are more options. This is similar to my preference for “between” only for two things and “among” for more than two.

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10 points

They do all sound stupid.

As it’s a complete statement just say “I’m wondering if the monkey can see my ears.”

Because it is ‘the’ monkey, rather than ‘a’ monkey, it is implied that the monkey has already been referred to.

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