Who/Whom question - grammar nits only please

[Kimbell175113]

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BTW, to all the whom-haters, I say "whom" in casual conversation. It's pretty simple grammar. A fair number of past tense irregularities aside, English has some of the easiest grammatical rules among commonly spoken languages. "Whom" is the object, not hard to remember, try not to look retarded.

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QFT

This kind of thing shouldn't be hard AT ALL. The difference between who and whom is exactly the same as he/him, me/I, we/us, etc. Earlier someone said that the "trick" to who and whom was replacing with he and him, but why is that a trick? It's just the way the pronoun works. It's not magic, it's not arbitrary, it's not deliberately confusing.

[Golden_Rhino]

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BTW, to all the whom-haters, I say "whom" in casual conversation. It's pretty simple grammar. A fair number of past tense irregularities aside, English has some of the easiest grammatical rules among commonly spoken languages. "Whom" is the object, not hard to remember, try not to look retarded.

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QFT

This kind of thing shouldn't be hard AT ALL. The difference between who and whom is exactly the same as he/him, me/I, we/us, etc. Earlier someone said that the "trick" to who and whom was replacing with he and him, but why is that a trick? It's just the way the pronoun works. It's not magic, it's not arbitrary, it's not deliberately confusing.

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Why do people have to be so condescending when writing about grammar?

[maryfield48]

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What do the grammar nits think...can words become correct (who) because other correct words are lacking from the average English speaker's vocabulary(whom)?

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The answer is a resounding yes.

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Not if he's asking grammar nits.

I agree with you, of course.

The 'less/fewer' distinction is even further along the road to extinction. I delight in using the traditionally 'correct' word, and in correcting my friends and loved ones when they don't. But that's more out of a sense of mischief and perversity than anything else.

Also, perhaps, some small sense of "I learned the distinction, why the heck shouldn't everyone else have to?!"

[Brainwalter]

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The 'less/fewer' distinction is even further along the road to extinction. I delight in using the traditionally 'correct' word, and in correcting my friends and loved ones when they don't. But that's more out of a sense of mischief and perversity than anything else.

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I'm glad I'm not alone on this. I'm half joking when I do this though..

[.Alex.]

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The 'less/fewer' distinction is even further along the road to extinction. I delight in using the traditionally 'correct' word, and in correcting my friends and loved ones when they don't. But that's more out of a sense of mischief and perversity than anything else.

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I'm glad I'm not alone on this. I'm half joking when I do this though..

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I do this with good/well.

[bobman0330]

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The 'less/fewer' distinction is even further along the road to extinction. I delight in using the traditionally 'correct' word, and in correcting my friends and loved ones when they don't. But that's more out of a sense of mischief and perversity than anything else.

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I'm not so sure I agree. Absolutely, a lot of people do it wrong in common discourse, but most written material, and pretty much all published material (maybe even most TV shows and movies) observes the distinction correctly. Compare that with vanished rules like the preposition at the end of the sentence, and it's a lot different. Perhaps because using the correct form of less/fewer doesn't actually sound awkward, most people are just too lazy to pick the right one.

[econophile]

grammar is too confusing.

once you understand objects and subjects, or nominative, accusative, and dative tenses (which i only understood after studying german) then you still have to learn exceptions.

for example, predicate nominatives are potentially confusing.

"This is he speaking," and "I am he," are both correct, even though you might think that "he" is the object of "to be." but because of our language's love for irregular verbs, "to be" gets speacial treament.

[SoloAJ]

No need for a 40k refund. It isn't that nice of a place [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Besides, I would hardly consider myself a failure if I didn't know the answer to a grammar question. Considering there are about 30-50% of all old grammar farts are still convinced that grammar isn't diachronic.....whatever.

That all said, I wasn't even nit-fighting with bobman; I just didn't understand his response.

And finally, it is really too bad that there are too many grammatical differences to know them all. I honestly had never even known there was a difference between fewer/less....of course now I will find myself noticing it all of the time....Heh.

[Delphin]

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"(Who/Whom) did you say was calling?"

The site gives Whom as the answer. Neither she nor I can figure this out - both of us, along with everyone else she has asked, think it should be Who. Are we missing something or is the web site?

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"Who[m] was calling?" is a sentence where Who[m] is used in precisely the same way as in the OP. "He was calling." is correct and "Him was calling." is obviously wrong. This suggests that "Who was calling?" is correct, and "Whom was calling?" is incorrect. "Whom were you calling?" would be a correct usage of Whom.