People like that can be defeated by their own rules. Step 1: Call them a ‘nice person’ however you want to phrase it. Step 2: Get them to agree that indeed, they are a ‘nice person’. Step 3: Inform them that originally, ‘nice’ meant ‘ignorant’. Step 4: Now they either must admit to being ignorant (because words and how they are used are not allowed to change) or they must admit that ‘whom’ is outdated and ‘who’ works just fine (because words and their usage change over time).
Actually (pedantry incoming) there is a rule, and it’s simple. If “him” works in a sentence, so does “whom.” “For him, the bell tolls.” A sentence that looks like it needs “he” gets “who.” “He was that masked man?” But as previous comments have noted, words and usage change over time, and so the rule can now be safely ignored.
The difference between “who” and “whom” is the same as “he” and “him.” I think the only reason we find “whom” clumsy in casual conversation is because people stopped using it altogether, so we don’t develop the ear for it that we do for other case-sensitive words.
Personally, I only use “whom” when it follows a preposition, e.g. “to whom it may concern”; in all other scenarios it sounds far too forced, e.g. “Whom did you see?” vs “Who did you see?”
But people mess up “he” and “him” all the time (as well as “I” and “me”). I hear it all the time. Because they have been corrected to say “my friend and I” instead of “me and me friend”, they start using it even when they shouldn’t. So you’ll hear things like, “so he told my friend and I that…”
“My friend and me” can certainly be gramatical, for example “he gave it to my friend and me”. (“I/me” isn’t changed by the friend’s presence.) Putting yourself last in the list is a convention of courtesy, not properly of grammar.
New site design: Arggh! Whaythehell too much whitespace, and invisible gray text when typing comments. The individually-wrapped comments on the front page likewise have too much whitespace.
For “I” and “me”, it is like “who”/”whom” and “he”/”him”. However people very frequently say “I” because of overcorrection. I wince whenever I hear people say “this happened to him and I”. You wouldn’t say “it happened to I” but as soon as another person gets added suddenly even supposedly-smart people use “I”.
I learned the vosotros pronoun and verb conjugation in my Spanish classes. Latin American Spanish does not use it at all. Should I go to Colombia and mock them by saying, “Are there no Spanish lessons in Colombian schools?” No. Vosotros has been gone since around 1840. Why think that ‘outdated’ means ‘proper’?
not sure about America but in Canada you learn a lot more grammar in English as a second language courses than you do in five years of advanced English in high school.
In fact we never took grammar, just essay writing.
I thought “strunk” just meant both drunk and stoned – but I’m seriously hesitant about pointing out the benefits of proper capitalization to Adam. It would have helped to identify Strunk and White as proper nouns and would have simplified my googling, but I’m not fond of being fed into a wood chipper.
Speaking of which, the greyish mass that is the comment field is pretty inducive to typos, and I’m now pretty sure that was done intentionally. Very linguo-egalitarian.
Agree with Pie and Victo. The distinction between «who» and «whom» is not in the least difficult; rather, it’s just that many people take pride in their ignorance on the matter. Sure, it’s an arbitrary standard and the language works well enough without it, but you can say that about just about any grammatical rule.
Some take pride in their ignorance of outdated grammatical rules, some take pride in their ignorance of how the language has changed. Pick your poison, I chose mine already.
The “White” of “Strunk & White” is the sme E.B. White known for (inter many alia) “The Sword In The Stone” and “The Trumpet Of The Swan”.
Repeating so it’s on the top level:
New site design: Arggh! Whaythehell too much whitespace, and invisible gray text when typing comments. The individually-wrapped comments on the front page likewise have too much whitespace.
For several months your site was inaccessible to me due to hi-jacking. Before I could get to the last panel of the current strip I was whisked away to some softwareupdater that wouldn’t let go, thereby forcing a three-fingered salute to close Chrome. I was pleased to see that the new incarnation of the site is not plagued with that problem. However, the new look is so 70’s-ish as to be a distraction, and can be summed up most appropriately by the word “Yuck!” I’m not going to re-iterate what others have commented on previously, so just let me say that the site developers you turned to did not do you any favors. Please, while you have it out for grammar-nazis and grampa-nazis, put those site saboteurs into the wood chipper. Then you can find someone above 3rd-grade intelligence to develop a more customer-friendly site! (Hint: Don’t use the same 4th-graders that Micro$oft uses!)
My personal philosophy on the matter is that language exists to facilitate communication, so as long as you’re able to convey your meaning, the exact mechanics aren’t ultra-vital. If there’s not really any confusion when someone uses “who” or “whom” wrong, then why sweat it?
For example, if I’m in the woods and a drunken hillbilly runs past screaming “THEM’S A HORDE A BEAR WHAT’S COMIN’!” then yes, that grammar is atrocious, but as long as I’m able to piece together the need to turn tail and run, I’m not going to particularly care if his sentence structure needs work.
Then again, I’m not an English major, so grains of salt and so forth.
I had to study Latin for anybody to tell me what the rule was.
If the person is performing the action of the sentence (the subject of the verb), use who. Otherwise, use whom (objects of the sentence). Same for I and Me.
To be honest, there’s a big difference between spoken language and written language. Each generation and region adds its own rules, but there’s a lot of attrition to them–a lot phraseology, slang, and new meanings we used in the 1980s simply aren’t used today, and when you watch a movie from that decade, the language is part of what dates it.
That’s why the rules for grammar–which are really for the written word–lag behind how we speak. Writing used to be our way of communicating to generations to come; otherwise, reading things like The Red Badge of Courage or For Whom the Bell Tolls would be like trying to read an “untranslated” version of Beowulf. Things changed when the Internet came along, and texting and social media became the primary way of communication. Think of how many times you called a friend on the phone and talked for a while…..
And I think that’s why there’s a lot more complaining and willful ignorance when it comes to the rules of grammar, not to mention a general lack of understanding the difference between good grammar and good style. The uses of spoken and written language have become blurred, and so has our understanding their respective roles and the uses of their grammar.
People like that can be defeated by their own rules. Step 1: Call them a ‘nice person’ however you want to phrase it. Step 2: Get them to agree that indeed, they are a ‘nice person’. Step 3: Inform them that originally, ‘nice’ meant ‘ignorant’. Step 4: Now they either must admit to being ignorant (because words and how they are used are not allowed to change) or they must admit that ‘whom’ is outdated and ‘who’ works just fine (because words and their usage change over time).
Call them a ‘bundle of sticks’ if they get all uppity.
Not the ‘other word’ for it, just ‘a bundle of sticks’.
“You’re a real bundle of sticks, Chad.”
O.o….ur right….oh my goodness
thanks wraj!
Actually (pedantry incoming) there is a rule, and it’s simple. If “him” works in a sentence, so does “whom.” “For him, the bell tolls.” A sentence that looks like it needs “he” gets “who.” “He was that masked man?” But as previous comments have noted, words and usage change over time, and so the rule can now be safely ignored.
To him it may concern, I think you must be a really nice person. 😛
-Just poking fun
Yeah, whom is no longer relevant except, perhaps, in legal documents. But that’s because legal English is a different language than real Engilsh.
The difference between “who” and “whom” is the same as “he” and “him.” I think the only reason we find “whom” clumsy in casual conversation is because people stopped using it altogether, so we don’t develop the ear for it that we do for other case-sensitive words.
Personally, I only use “whom” when it follows a preposition, e.g. “to whom it may concern”; in all other scenarios it sounds far too forced, e.g. “Whom did you see?” vs “Who did you see?”
But people mess up “he” and “him” all the time (as well as “I” and “me”). I hear it all the time. Because they have been corrected to say “my friend and I” instead of “me and me friend”, they start using it even when they shouldn’t. So you’ll hear things like, “so he told my friend and I that…”
“My friend and me” can certainly be gramatical, for example “he gave it to my friend and me”. (“I/me” isn’t changed by the friend’s presence.) Putting yourself last in the list is a convention of courtesy, not properly of grammar.
New site design: Arggh! Whaythehell too much whitespace, and invisible gray text when typing comments. The individually-wrapped comments on the front page likewise have too much whitespace.
For “I” and “me”, it is like “who”/”whom” and “he”/”him”. However people very frequently say “I” because of overcorrection. I wince whenever I hear people say “this happened to him and I”. You wouldn’t say “it happened to I” but as soon as another person gets added suddenly even supposedly-smart people use “I”.
My native language being German and not English, “whom” is one of the very few things that DO make sense to me
Same here. Heck, I learned that in english lessons at school … are there no english lessons at american schools?
Cetero censeo, writing comments with medium gray letters on a very slightly lighter gray background sucks.
I learned the vosotros pronoun and verb conjugation in my Spanish classes. Latin American Spanish does not use it at all. Should I go to Colombia and mock them by saying, “Are there no Spanish lessons in Colombian schools?” No. Vosotros has been gone since around 1840. Why think that ‘outdated’ means ‘proper’?
not sure about America but in Canada you learn a lot more grammar in English as a second language courses than you do in five years of advanced English in high school.
In fact we never took grammar, just essay writing.
I thought “strunk” just meant both drunk and stoned – but I’m seriously hesitant about pointing out the benefits of proper capitalization to Adam. It would have helped to identify Strunk and White as proper nouns and would have simplified my googling, but I’m not fond of being fed into a wood chipper.
Speaking of which, the greyish mass that is the comment field is pretty inducive to typos, and I’m now pretty sure that was done intentionally. Very linguo-egalitarian.
Kind hard to capitalize when the dialogue is written in all-caps.
And agree…making us typing gray on grey is diabolical.
Agree with Pie and Victo. The distinction between «who» and «whom» is not in the least difficult; rather, it’s just that many people take pride in their ignorance on the matter. Sure, it’s an arbitrary standard and the language works well enough without it, but you can say that about just about any grammatical rule.
Some take pride in their ignorance of outdated grammatical rules, some take pride in their ignorance of how the language has changed. Pick your poison, I chose mine already.
I particularly love the mustache in panel 3. Is that Strunk or White? Either way, it’s an awesome ‘stache!
Genuinely read that as “wom” at first (like “wham” with a o). Was deeply confused, then felt like a total moron.
So you’re saying that now you have a pretty realistic picture of yourself?
The “White” of “Strunk & White” is the sme E.B. White known for (inter many alia) “The Sword In The Stone” and “The Trumpet Of The Swan”.
Repeating so it’s on the top level:
New site design: Arggh! Whaythehell too much whitespace, and invisible gray text when typing comments. The individually-wrapped comments on the front page likewise have too much whitespace.
Pedantry alert– EB White did not write “The Sword in the Stone”– that was TH White– but he did write “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little.”
For several months your site was inaccessible to me due to hi-jacking. Before I could get to the last panel of the current strip I was whisked away to some softwareupdater that wouldn’t let go, thereby forcing a three-fingered salute to close Chrome. I was pleased to see that the new incarnation of the site is not plagued with that problem. However, the new look is so 70’s-ish as to be a distraction, and can be summed up most appropriately by the word “Yuck!” I’m not going to re-iterate what others have commented on previously, so just let me say that the site developers you turned to did not do you any favors. Please, while you have it out for grammar-nazis and grampa-nazis, put those site saboteurs into the wood chipper. Then you can find someone above 3rd-grade intelligence to develop a more customer-friendly site! (Hint: Don’t use the same 4th-graders that Micro$oft uses!)
CleverM !
The Oatmeal has given good advice on this one..
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/who_vs_whom
The funny thing is that there are surprisingly few situations I can think of off the top of my head where “that dude” substitutes well for “whom.”
I am pretty sleep-deprived right now, though, so… y’know… grain of salt.
My personal philosophy on the matter is that language exists to facilitate communication, so as long as you’re able to convey your meaning, the exact mechanics aren’t ultra-vital. If there’s not really any confusion when someone uses “who” or “whom” wrong, then why sweat it?
For example, if I’m in the woods and a drunken hillbilly runs past screaming “THEM’S A HORDE A BEAR WHAT’S COMIN’!” then yes, that grammar is atrocious, but as long as I’m able to piece together the need to turn tail and run, I’m not going to particularly care if his sentence structure needs work.
Then again, I’m not an English major, so grains of salt and so forth.
“before 900; Middle English; Old English hwām, dative of hwā who” – copied directly from dictionary.com
So, no one person invented the word “whom”; it was just a byproduct of the evolution from Germanic and Latin to the English that we know today.
I had to study Latin for anybody to tell me what the rule was.
If the person is performing the action of the sentence (the subject of the verb), use who. Otherwise, use whom (objects of the sentence). Same for I and Me.
To be honest, there’s a big difference between spoken language and written language. Each generation and region adds its own rules, but there’s a lot of attrition to them–a lot phraseology, slang, and new meanings we used in the 1980s simply aren’t used today, and when you watch a movie from that decade, the language is part of what dates it.
That’s why the rules for grammar–which are really for the written word–lag behind how we speak. Writing used to be our way of communicating to generations to come; otherwise, reading things like The Red Badge of Courage or For Whom the Bell Tolls would be like trying to read an “untranslated” version of Beowulf. Things changed when the Internet came along, and texting and social media became the primary way of communication. Think of how many times you called a friend on the phone and talked for a while…..
And I think that’s why there’s a lot more complaining and willful ignorance when it comes to the rules of grammar, not to mention a general lack of understanding the difference between good grammar and good style. The uses of spoken and written language have become blurred, and so has our understanding their respective roles and the uses of their grammar.