The Spelling Nazi thread.

[St Leo]

Just learn Latin. That's where the silly who/whom distinction is from.

Who? I, you, she, he, it, we, you, they.
Whom? Me, you, her, him, it, us, you, them.

Whom? Myself, yourself, herself, himself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.

Whose? Mine, yours, hers, his, its, ours, yours, theirs.

Whose x? My x, your x, her x, his x, its x, our x, your x, their x.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

My point was, it's usually used as a collective rather than a plural in contemporary English.

Grammatical resistance is futile.


On this side of the pond and Down Under we would say-

"You don't know who Cake are ?"

because Cake, although a band (singular) is composed of more than one person, thus when asking about THEM, you say 'are'- which is the plural.

If you were attempting to say, for instance, that Cake was the best band in the world, then you might say:

"Verily, thou knowest not what Cake is ?"

but you could still legitimately say 'are' too, so long as you changed 'what' to 'who'.

The answer is to use what makes sense grammatically in each context.


And hooray for revisers such as Flaubert.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Hueij
Do you know who The Beatles is?

Yeah, I'm with you on this one. The noun and the verb must agree. If one is plural then the other must be plural.

I.E. "Do you know who the Beatles are?" or "Do you know who Cake is?"

[Mrs. Tuberski]

I know im no where near qualified to answer in this thread but my posting this should be good for a few laughs.

[civman2000]

Originally posted by St Leo
Just learn Latin. That's where the silly who/whom distinction is from.

Who? I, you, she, he, it, we, you, they.
Whom? Me, you, her, him, it, us, you, them.

Whom? Myself, yourself, herself, himself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.

Whose? Mine, yours, hers, his, its, ours, yours, theirs.

Whose x? My x, your x, her x, his x, its x, our x, your x, their x.

Actually, it is a perfectly respectable distinction in English that has nothing to do with Latin. However, in every dialect I have encountered, whom is NOT the accusative of who, but merely a special form that appears after prepositions. I have never met anyone who would normally say "Whom did you see?"; indeed, that sounds just as ungrammatical to me as "the person to who I gave it". Furthermore, in every dialect of English, "to be" does NOT take two nominative nouns; the second noun is accusative.

[St Leo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_(pronoun)

The pronoun who, in the English language, is the interrogative and relative pronoun that is used to refer to human beings and some animals perceived as sentient.

The corresponding interrogative pronouns for non-sentient beings are what and which, and the relative pronouns are that and which, though that and which are sometimes used in contexts where who might be a more suitable choice.

Cake is not a sentient being, so the correct pronouns are "what" and "that". However, it is legitimate to use "Cake" as a plural shorthand for "members of Cake", in which case the correct pairing is "who/are".

Traditionally, who has the case forms whose, representing the genitive case, and whom, both the accusative and the dative case. See also declension in English.

Whom is obsolescent in colloquial English. Formal Queen's English grammar prescribes that "who" is a subjective pronoun, and that "whom" is the corresponding objective pronoun. However, in informal English (and increasingly more so in some formal situations as well, especially in American English), "whom" is dying in most dialects; "who" has become far more common than "whom" for both subject and object forms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_(pronoun)

Bite me, civman.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by St Leo


Bite me, civman.

People still say and write 'whom' over here.


Whilst, too.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by civman2000
Furthermore, in every dialect of English, "to be" does NOT take two nominative nouns; the second noun is accusative.

Uh, most colloquial dialects, not every dialect.

alt.usage.english FAQ: "It's me" vs "It is I"

The rule ... is *not* (as is commonly misstated) that the nominative should *always* be used after "to be". Rather, it is that "to be" should link two noun phrases of the same case, whether this be nominative or accusative:

I believe that he is I. Who do you believe that he is?
I believe him to be me. Whom do you believe him to be?

According to the traditional grammar being used here, "to be" is not a transitive verb, but a *copulative* verb. When you say that A is B, you don't imply that A, by being B, is doing something to B. (After all, B is also doing it to A.) Other verbs considered copulative are "to become", "to remain", "to seem", and "to look".

[Kontiki]

I use whom all the time, but generally only when I write. I tend not to be quite as careful about my grammar when speaking.

[civman2000]

Originally posted by St Leo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_(pronoun)

The pronoun who, in the English language, is the interrogative and relative pronoun that is used to refer to human beings and some animals perceived as sentient.

The corresponding interrogative pronouns for non-sentient beings are what and which, and the relative pronouns are that and which, though that and which are sometimes used in contexts where who might be a more suitable choice.

Cake is not a sentient being, so the correct pronouns are "what" and "that". However, it is legitimate to use "Cake" as a plural shorthand for "members of Cake", in which case the correct pairing is "who/are".

Traditionally, who has the case forms whose, representing the genitive case, and whom, both the accusative and the dative case. See also declension in English.

Whom is obsolescent in colloquial English. Formal Queen's English grammar prescribes that "who" is a subjective pronoun, and that "whom" is the corresponding objective pronoun. However, in informal English (and increasingly more so in some formal situations as well, especially in American English), "whom" is dying in most dialects; "who" has become far more common than "whom" for both subject and object forms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_(pronoun)

Bite me, civman.

*CHOMP*

Wikipedia qualifies everything it says with "Traditionally." Traditional "grammar" (aka turning English into Latin) has nothing to do with the actual language of English. To say that "whom" is the accusative form of "who" in Modern English is simply false (at least in my dialect and almost all American dialects; I don't know about on the other side of the pond). That said, you might reasonably recommend that "whom" be used as such in formal writing, but I would also disagree with that: it will only distract the reader, because even if it conforms to some "traditional" standard, it still sounds awkward and unnatural, in the same way that "I food eat" sounds wrong (even though that was the word order used in Latin and it was also used in English many centuries ago). All humans who speak a language have a natural ability to judge whether sentences sound grammatical. My basic rule of thumb when writing is to never write something that sounds ungrammatical. I sometimes follow rules of formal writing to eliminate certain structures that I consider to be grammatical, but it is a bad idea to let it provide new structures that are ungrammatical.

Uh, most colloquial dialects, not every dialect.

No. Unless a few idiolects have made "It is I" grammatical and "It is me" ungrammatical because of prescriptivist pressures (which seems unlikely), there are NO dialects of English that follow this "rule". It was a rule of Latin, but it has not been a rule of English for at least two or three centuries, or at least longer, if it ever was in the first place.

The link you provided on "It is I" is very inaccurate. First, making comparisons to other languages is completely irrelevant: we are discussing a property of English; it makes no difference whether French has the same property.

A few specific problems with your link:

And we *do* follow that rule to some extent: "Who are they?" (not "Who are them?" or "Whom are they?") "We are they!"

This is based on a totally incorrect analysis of the sentences. In "Who are they?", "they" is the subject and "who" is the object: compare with "Who am I?" and the similarly inverted syntax in "What did they do?" (does anyone want to claim that "what" is the subject in that one??). Secondly, I've never heard "we are they!"; the much more natural response would be "they're us" (or maybe "we're them").

(Speakers who would substitute "me" for "I" in the "It is I who am at fault" example would also sacrifice the agreement of person, and substitute "is" for "am".)

Again, completely misanalyzed. In "It's me who's at fault", "I" is not the subject of the second verb; it's the object of the first. This sentence is syntactically equivalent to "Who is at fault is me". The movement of non-noun subjects (yes, "who is at fault" is not actually a noun phrase) to the right and their replacement by "it" is a very common syntactic phenomenon in English (for example, consider "It is wrong to kill people" and "To kill people is wrong").