Timeline for For who or For whom
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 8, 2023 at 17:37 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Mar 8, 2023 at 17:44 | |||||
| Oct 31, 2022 at 18:12 | comment | added | gotube♦ | @FireandIce Yep, sounds natural enough to me | |
| Oct 31, 2022 at 15:35 | comment | added | Fire and Ice | @gotube I hear “For who” in conversational contexts like - I will join the army! - But for who? No one in your country even likes you. You think it is “wrong” in this kind of conversational context? I think it is probably not used even by “uneducated” native speakers though in full constructions like People for who I joined the army don’t even like me! I am not sure though. | |
| Jan 17, 2022 at 21:54 | history | mod moved comments to chat | |||
| Jan 17, 2022 at 21:44 | comment | added | David Siegel | @gotube I will have to think some about "for who" I don't normally use it myself. I have used "wherefore" In drafting formal resolutions for a municipal council, which I was asking them to adopt. I have also used it in various more or less legalistic writings, including I think on law.se. I have also used it in literary criticism "Now, wherefore can we conclude that Joe was jealous of Betty". | |
| Jan 17, 2022 at 21:34 | comment | added | gotube♦ | @DavidSiegel Other than in formal writing, I don't acknowledge any prescriptivist rules. To my ears, "for who" is as wrong as "she am...", and I'd thought it was the same for everyone. Same with "wherefore". I haven't seen or heard it in anything less than 100 years old. But if native speakers still use "for who" and "wherefore", then I'm wrong about that, and thanks for pointing it out. Can you give examples of "wherefore" and "for who" in natural modern language? | |
| Jan 17, 2022 at 21:15 | comment | added | David Siegel | @gotube I use wherefore. In fact I use it a good deal more than I do "whom". You also write that ""for who" (together) is always incorrect." On what basis? Native speakers do use that construction. To a pure descriptivist that makes it correct by definition. Or are there some prescriptive rules that still apply? If so, how does one distinguish such rules? | |
| Jan 17, 2022 at 19:30 | comment | added | gotube♦ | @Tristan "Obsolete" is a big word. People still do use "whom", and though it may sound old-fashioned, we cannot say it's obsolete until people no longer use it at all. | |
| Jan 17, 2022 at 19:27 | comment | added | gotube♦ | @Mergasov "for who" (together) is always incorrect. | |
| Jan 17, 2022 at 13:27 | comment | added | Tristan | I'd go even further than saying whom is rapidly becoming obsolete and say it already is in actual speech and informal writing, just with formal styleguides lagging behind usage as usual. For the given sentence, I'd probably drop the relativiser entirely going for "I am the one the cafe was kept open for" , or even "the cafe was kept open for me" | |
| Jan 17, 2022 at 12:41 | comment | added | Ilya Loskutov | @gotube I usually come across who/whom sentences where a preposition is placed just before the relative pronoun as long as it is whom (I am the one for whom the cafe was kept open), and at the end of the sentence otherwise (I am the one who the cafe was kept open for). Isn't there any difference if we use for who in this case? | |
| Jan 17, 2022 at 8:40 | comment | added | gotube♦ | Great point. In fact, in the OP's example sentence is a case in point for the disappearance of "whom". If we only front "who/whom", and leave the "for" at the end of the sentence -- which is more common in modern English -- we get, "I am the one who OR whom the cafe was kept open for. Grammatically, it should be "whom", but because people find "whom" pompous, "who" is acceptable. | |
| Jan 17, 2022 at 8:36 | history | edited | gotube♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
typos
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| Jan 16, 2022 at 22:28 | history | answered | David Siegel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |