Recently, one of our members made a post in which they questioned how to use the word 'WHOM'... Just in case someone really wants to know the answer to that, I thought I would respond... The grammatical rule for using 'whom' is quite simple really; 'If the question implied can be answered with either of the pronouns, her, him, or them, then 'whom' would be correct'.... I would not be offended by contrary views, in fact, I still think of myself as being 'teachable'; so, reply with differing opinions (or levels of knowledge) if you disagree with my statement... This post not intended to start arguments but discussion/debate in our on-going (hopefully) quest for knowledge and understanding is always welcome.. Is it not?? Love to all, Hank....
It is a grammatical rule that I do not know and when I use "whom" I do it on "feel", so to speak. I was thinking about the rule that you wrote above but then thought that sometimes there are instances when there is no question posed and whom is chosen to be used....think of the phrase/cliché, "To whom it may concern". Is there a specific rule for "whom-use" when questions are not posed? I find the nuances of the english language interesting. One is indeed never too old to learn.
I used to tell my ESL (English as a Second Language) students if it rhymed, it was wrong. "TO WHO"--nope! All they had to do was substitute the rhyme in the sentence they were building, and they rarely got it wrong. If you ever want to experience chaos try teaching English, the least logical of languages, to a classroom of mixed-age adults who speak a total of seven languages as their native tongues.
Yes Marlingardener that does sound like quite a challenge. I agree that the English language is quite a mixed up one and very hard to understand some of the usages of words that are spelled the same but mean different things. Like resume. I will resume typing up my new resume tomorrow.
Yes, just like "i before e except after c or when it sounds like way as in neighbor and weigh"...un huh! So simple if you can remember all the rhymes and rules. so weird!
Oh, it's a little more complicated than that Hank. If I take it after your "rule" in Italics, then I should ask "Whom did you tell the secret?" For an answer like "I told him". But I guess the correct one would still be "WHO...?" While... "Whom did you give my book" Would be correct, for the answer "I gave it to him." It has something to do with CASES... of which in Romanian there's 5. WHOM would be same as "Dative case" in Romanian. No matter how complicated and difficult you may think ENGLISH is, it's nothing compared to ROMANIAN and all the other Romantic languages that I am somewhat familiar with. English is a piece of cake, as far as GRAMMAR goes. Just to explain a bit...the verb to to be (which is let's say "complicated" in English, as it's got more forms than common verbs) Eu sunt = I am Tu esti = You are El/Ea e/este = He/She is Noi suntem = We are Voi sunteti = You are Ei/Ele sunt = They are Trust me, English is easy!
