Does this sound natural?
Russia is losing around one million people of working age yearly, which stands to put Russia's economy in harm's way.

I would like someone to tell me if the "which stands to" part makes sense here. Or does "stand to" work well only with such verbs as "to gain" and "to lose?"

Question

Does this sound natural?
Russia is losing around one million people of working age yearly, which stands to put Russia's economy in harm's way.

I would like someone to tell me if the "which stands to" part makes sense here. Or does "stand to" work well only with such verbs as "to gain" and "to lose?"

Answer

Unnatural.

Russia loses around one million people per year whom in working age  ,standing  to put Russia's economy harm.

Answer

Thank you for the detailed answer, Stephen. It helps a lot.

Answer

Hi Ivan, 'stands to' works grammatically and the meaning you want to express is clear, but as a native speaker I would choose something like 'threatens to harm' as it's stronger and more in line with the seriousness of the sentence.

I'm also not sure about 'losing one million people' - it's not quite clear and sounds as if they could be lost in the woods! You could say this as 'losing one million people a year to (retirement, or whatever is causing the loss).

Answers · 3

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