There is a common belief that English sentences should not be ended with prepositions. I have heard that Californian teachers are especially vigorous in beating this nonsense into students' heads. There is a famous anecdote telling the story of a Nobel prize winner Winston Churchill, who was offended by an editor clumsily rearranging one of his sentences, which ended with a preposition. Being proud of his style, Winston Churchill wrote in reply (note that are several variants of this phrase circulating): "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

This joke is not as good as it may seem at first glance, because, in this sentence, up is a verb particle, not a preposition! Simply speaking, the verb is the whole phrase put up. Verb particles can be moved, e.g.: both "switch off the lights" and "switch the lights off" are grammatical. However, I suspect that it is ungrammatical to move particles the way Winston Churchill did in his humorous reply to the editor.

Anyways, "stranded" prepositions are perfectly fine in English. Yet, I have been wondering why this is considered ungrammatical by so many people. Turns out that Romance languages, in general, and Latin in particular, do not have preposition stranding. Teachers believed that constructs impossible in Latin should not be allowed in English. As a result, for hundreds of years, they have been telling us that "nobody to play with" is ungrammatical.

Disclaimer: I know that there are some good arguments against the veracity of Churchill's story.

Credits: This post resulted from observations of El Nico Fauceglia and remarks by a linguist who wanted to remain anonymous. Anna Belova told me the Churchill's anecdote.