As second-language users of English, or for those of us who were raised on Brighter Grammar, we grew up believing that memorising grammar rules was enough to get us through school. We learnt the rules, applied them correctly, and expected to be rewarded with those coveted As and Bs.
Then, eventually, we had to use English in the real world. Suddenly, being a user of English was no longer about filling in the blanks correctly in a textbook. We had to write emails, make presentations, hold conversations, argue a point, tell a story, and express exactly what we meant without sounding awkward, or worse, unintelligible.
Of course, the onus is on us to be articulate and demonstrate a high level of competence in the language some of us now use more than our mother tongue, but nobody quite warned us about English grammar not always being as logical or consistent as we were led to believe. Just when you think you have finally got it down pat, it throws you off kilter, because a rule that worked perfectly in one sentence suddenly seems not to apply in another. You check the grammar book and ask yourself whether you have misunderstood the rule. And sometimes, the answer is simply: “Well… English”.
So what do we do? I’d say we keep learning as we go.
And today, we tackle one of those perennial sources of confusion: who vs whom.
At its most basic, the traditional rule is quite straightforward:
- ‘Who’ is used as the subject of a sentence or clause.
- ‘Whom’ is used as the object.
Think of it this way: ‘who’ does the action; ‘whom’ receives the action.
For example:
Who called you?
Here, ‘who’ is the subject (the person is doing the calling).
Now consider, “whom did you call?”
Here, ‘whom’ is the object (the person is receiving the action of the verb call).
While we understand that rules sometimes do apply in English grammar, we can still find a few tricks to help us navigate them without embarrassing ourselves. For this one, the easiest trick is to replace who/whom with ‘he/him’.
If ‘he’ works, use ‘who’.
If ‘him’ works, use ‘whom’.
For example,
Who called?
→ He called.
Therefore: Who called?
Whom did you call?
→ I called him.
Therefore: Whom did you call?
And then English decides to make things complicated. Again.
Consider this sentence:
To whom did you give the book?
The traditional grammatical answer is whom because the word follows the preposition to. You can test it by rearranging the sentence:
You gave the book to him.
Not ‘to he’.
Therefore, ‘to whom’.
But now consider how people actually speak:
Who did you give the book to?
That sounds perfectly natural to most English speakers.
In everyday English, we frequently place the preposition at the end of the sentence rather than putting it before whom. And once we do that, ‘whom’ starts to sound increasingly formal, even old-fashioned.
Some of us, however, would rather be grammatically correct and sound a little old-fashioned than risk getting it wrong. That said, those who use the more colloquial version are not necessarily incorrect. They are simply following the conventions of modern spoken English, where who has become increasingly acceptable in contexts that traditionally required whom.
There are rules, exceptions to the rules, conventions that depend on context, and forms that are technically correct but sound unnatural in ordinary conversation. There are also forms that traditional grammar books might frown upon but that millions of fluent speakers use every day. Languages are not static systems designed once and then handed down to us in perfect condition. They evolve because people use them, and as usage changes, grammatical conventions change as well.
Perhaps that is the real lesson of learning a language: you never quite finish learning it; you just get better at navigating its quirks.
