
For whom, the bell tolls - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21737489-whom-bell-tolls-court-common-usage-old-pronoun-losing-its-case
======
raverbashing
I'm more annoyed by the use of "it's" in place of the possessive neutral
pronoun.

But I guess the distinction between whom and who is not so obvious in a lot of
cases (and I was surprised to realize it is really "Whom to follow").

German still have a lot more familiarity with cases, still "Der Dativ ist dem
Genitiv sein Tod"

~~~
cortesoft
I think “it’s” is confusing because adding apostrophe-s to a noun is normally
how you make a noun possessive, so it can seem logical to do the same to the
word ‘it’.

~~~
wgj
But it's not how you make other pronouns possessive.

~~~
dragonwriter
You don't add an “s” to other pronouns to make them possessive; “it” is
unusual (unique, I believe) in that it both adds an “s” _and_ does not take an
apostrophe; nouns generally do both, pronouns generally do neither.

------
shaki-dora
One of the CCC conferences had the motto “Who do you trust?”

They had a FAQ entry acknowledging that’s should technically be “whom”, but of
100+ complaints they got, all but one had come from Germans.

~~~
cup-of-tea
In many languages, including German and French, using the appropriate prounoun
is obligatory. I only know how to use "whom" myself because I learnt French.
About half the time I see English speakers try to use the word, it's wrong and
should be "who", and using "whom" wrongly looks even worse than just sticking
to "who" (which as argued, doesn't really look bad at all).

------
gerard
A common rule for determining whether “who” or “whom” is right is to
substitute “she” for “who,” and “her” for “whom,” and see which sounds the
better. Take the sentence, “He met a woman who they said was an actress.” Now
if “who” is correct then “she” can be used in its place. Let us try it. “He
met a woman she they said was an actress.” That instantly rings false. It
can’t be right. Hence the proper usage is “whom.” \-- Thurber /s

[https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/26c3v4/was_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/26c3v4/was_just_introduced_to_james_thurbers_the_ladies/)

On a more serious note, and not to claim right or wrong, I was taught in
primary school that "whom" should be used as the object of a preposition "she,
to whom I gave," or "she, with whom I studied," but never as a direct object;
"who do you know?", not "whom do you know?". No idea if the latter is a
geographical artifact or just what's taught nowdays. Speakers of slavic
languages would recognise those first two usages as the dative (кому, komu,
etc) and instrumental case (кем, kým, etc) respectively, and afaict in Old
English the dative hwǣm was used for both. I suppose the direct object "whom
do you know" came to popularity through more creative use somewhere along the
line.

~~~
5555624
Huh? I must be missing something. While it is true that “He met a woman she
they said was an actress” instantly rings false; had "her" been tried, it
would also instantly ring false: “He met a woman her they said was an
actress.”

~~~
shawabawa3
It's satire (hence the /s i guess)

------
factsaresacred
Great subheadline.

Total sidebar, but has any frequent reader of The Economist not been irked by
the recent removal of the comment section? It remained one of the few places
with a healthy signal-to-noise ratio and frequently the comments provided more
insight than the articles they sat below (The Economist is wont to
prescriptions as much as descriptions which helps to create debate).

Such a shame.

~~~
anonu
Are you referring to the "Letters" section? I'm looking at last week's
Economist and they still have it - unless the removal was even more recent!

~~~
dagw
I'm pretty sure he's referring to the comment section associated with each
article on the website.

~~~
anonu
Interesting - could it be that managing online discussions is really hard?

------
Y_Y
I would really like to see someone come up with a standard English, like the
Academie Francaise or the Caighdeán have for their respective languages. I'm
not a prescriptivist, but i think having a canonical standard people can
choose to adhere to is always a good thing.

For what it's worth, in my experience "whom" is fine to use for indirect
objects (a la dative) but not direct. But having these distinctions doesn't do
a whole lot for clarity, as the move away from proper case distinction in
modern German shows.

~~~
dmichulke
> I would really like to see someone come up with a standard English

I think that would be easier if you everyone agreed who'd set the default:

\- the most (Indian English)

\- the most powerful (the US) or

\- the closest to the root (the British)

~~~
cwmma
British isn't actually the closest to the root, American English is actually
far more conservative then British English, for instance the dropping of Rs
seen most places besides American English is actually an innovation.

~~~
Analemma_
A hypothetical "Académie anglais" would be about vocabulary and spelling, not
pronunciation. Even the French aren't bothered by the existence of accents.

------
rovek
Articles like this help me realise why people in the UK so frequently
misunderstand each other's meaning; the common usage language is a blunt
instrument. It's disappointing to witness and I'm certainly guilty of mediocre
articulation.

------
unclenoriega
Makes sense. "Whom" is my go-to example of an English word that is on its way
out.

------
JasonFruit
This is news to whom, exactly?

------
dang
That subtitle is too good not to use.

~~~
cperciva
I'm disappointed they didn't finish the joke: For whom, the bell tolls -- just
like it tolled a century ago for thee.

~~~
louisswiss
Tolls is on its way out as well. Most people I know would say the bell rings.
Perhaps a few would say it peals.

~~~
sevensor
You must not know too many people who listen to those guardians of the Queen's
English, Metallica.

------
qubex
I shan’t be dissuaded and will continue using _whom_ where appropriate.

~~~
louisswiss
Surely you mean 'I _shall_ continue using whom...'

~~~
dghf
We were taught that, for the first person, 'shall' indicates the simple future
while 'will' indicates determination: 'I _will_ continue using "whom",
regardless of what others may say.' For the second and third person, it's
pretty much the other way round: 'will' indicates the simple future, while
'shall' indicates obligation. ('I won't tidy my room!' 'Oh yes you shall!')

This distinction is allegedly unique to England, possibly to the south of
England: even there, I doubt it's adhered to much, except by sticklers. One of
the older books on grammar (possibly Fowler's Modern Usage, I'd have to check)
had the apocryphal story of the Scotsman who fell in the sea off the English
coast, and in fear and desperation shouted 'I will drown, and no one shall
save me!': onlookers left him to his fate, regretfully but in accordance with
his apparently plainly stated wishes.

~~~
mnw21cam
That's why at a wedding, you say "I will", not "I do".

------
frobozz
Why is this news? _Whom_ has been a rarity for decades.

Questions like "Who did you give it to?" are far more common in normal speech
than "To whom did you give it?", and have been since long before I was born.

~~~
CrystalLangUser
"To whom did you give it", ignoring the "whom", sounds like something that
might be generated by a robot trying to imitate the English language.

That contortion of a sentence comes from the old Prescriptivist rule "never
end a sentence with a preposition". Never mind that it leads to such odd
sentences as that, and a loss of clarity.

~~~
frobozz
The "prepositions are not things for ending sentences with" point is a
distraction.

"Who did you hit?" and even "who hit who" have long been the norm in speech.
The _whom_ version of those utterances would not often have passed the lips
even of older, more educated English speakers in the last decade of the 20th
century.

Here we are, nearly 20 years into this century and news is being published
about the demise of a word that had almost entirely fallen out of common usage
last century.

