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He is the man whom I met yesterday.

A relative pronoun can be omitted when it doesn't refer to the subject of the clause. So we can omit the relative pronoun 'whom' from the clause. But the clause is at the end of the sentence. It doesn't sound well after omitting the relative pronoun.

He is the man I met yesterday.

Is it correct to omit the relative pronoun?

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  • Most native English speakers (and BBC Radio 4 news bulletins) would now omit it. Jun 7, 2020 at 9:57

1 Answer 1

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The second example sounds idiomatically natural to an English native. The "whom" form would generally sound stilted and over-formal in casual speech.

You may even encounter "He is the man who I met yesterday", which (while grammatically inaccurate) is far more likely to be heard than the "whom" form -- but both would be less common in common conversation than the form without either.

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  • Why did this get a downvote? Jun 7, 2020 at 19:17

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