jim wrote:I don't follow you. 'Those of them' makes no sense to me. I've never read it before or heard anyone say it.
Nevertheless, the expression exists in English, and not just colloquially.
From
The diary of a teenage girl (2002) by Phoebe Gloeckner:
I cried because there are those of them who are just as intelligent as Ricky Wasserman or Arnie Greenwald or Yael Berg and just because of circumstance, they turn out so horribly.
From the New English Translation (2001) of the Christian Bible:
Those of them who were numbered from the tribe of Gad were 45,650. (Numbers 1:25)
From the
Revised statutes of Missouri (1985):
When two or more persons share a priority, those of them who do not renounce must concur in nominating another to act for them or in applying for appointment. (473.110. (4))
In each of these cases, I understand "those of them" further narrowing the scope of a previously-mentioned group of "them", just as artart and I understood it in their example.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons