Timeline for Is "Whom" a deprecated word?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
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| Jul 27, 2016 at 6:17 | comment | added | P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica | @FumbleFingers Well, then, we need to recruit to the site more Americans who are determined to show Mrs. Blashfield, their 3rd grade teacher, that we need fewer words, not more (or I should rather say less words...) and that she was poking at the last embers of a quenched fire, and that she can take the whole damned objective case with her to the grave. | |
| Oct 23, 2015 at 1:42 | history | edited | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 30, 2015 at 14:12 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @John: Noting the current votes on this page, I have some sympathy with our target audience of learners here on ELL. My answer (effectively saying Don't waste your time learning how to use whom) only has 4 upvotes, but there are 23 upvotes for TRomano's answer (which strongly implies You need to learn this, because it's part of standard English). My guess is most of the latter upvotes are from non-native speakers thinking I had to learn it, and I'm damned if I'm going to admit I wasted my time, so I'm gonna upvote this answer implying it's a useful lesson well learned. | |
| Aug 30, 2015 at 13:55 | comment | added | Micah Walter | Yes, so I would say "To whom am I speaking?" is the standard pedantic way of saying it, and "Who am I speaking to?" is the standard colloquial way, but mixing them just sounds odd to me. | |
| Aug 30, 2015 at 12:48 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @John: Indeed. I put it that way because I didn't want my hypothetical pedantic telephonist objecting to Whom am I speaking to? on the grounds that ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong anyway. Perhaps I should have chosen an example like Who did you see? But although according to the basic Victorian/Latin "rule" that also should be whom, I suspect many of the people who still use it at all would only do so following a preposition. It's all a bit of a mess - half-remembered rules half-heartedly adhered to by people who haven't yet moved on. | |
| Aug 30, 2015 at 1:39 | comment | added | Micah Walter | Of course, "Who am I speaking to?" is the current idiomatic way of saying it. | |
| Aug 29, 2015 at 0:55 | history | edited | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 29, 2015 at 0:47 | history | answered | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |