I hate the word whom. I think it’s clumsy, and no one knows how to use it. Last night, on one of the ubiquitous Law & Order repeats I heard Sam Waterston use it incorrectly.
One of the problems with who/whom is that unlike most of the English language “whom” has a case ending somewhat like the Romance languages. English is not a Romance language. If you get right down to it, English is a mutt.
The case ending means whom is used as an objective. For instance: For whom the bell tolls. See, it’s the object of the preposition “for.”
OK, that’s how it’s supposed to be used. It isn’t; it’s slaughtered. Very few people know how to use it, and so, I recommend we banish it to the heap of archaic language. Let’s just use “who” for everything.
“Who” in all cases works just fine and communicates orally and on paper. The language then is left with the irregular case endings of personal pronouns (I, me, he, she, it, etc.), which we can’t ever get rid of because they’re so ingrained and have no substitutes.
So, fling caution to the winds and stick your chin out (don’t you love the metaphor mixture) and say and write “who.”
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