
Whom am I speaking with? - steiza
http://www.olark.com/blog/2011/who-am-i-speaking-with/
======
imperialWicket
The winner is: With whom am I speaking?

You wouldn't say, "The car am I driving in?". And you should avoid dangling
prepositions. If your sentence (or clause) ends in a preposition, it is either
extraneous, or your sentence requires rewording.

~~~
lmkg
Terminal prepositions are poor _Latin_ , but they are perfectly acceptable
_English_. The prejudice against terminal prepositions (and split infinitives,
as well as such abominations as the s in island) came from a period in English
linguistics where a bunch of grammarians thought that English wasn't dignified
enough, and tried to pretend that it was a Romance language by shoehorning the
language into awkward and ungainly shapes that faintly resemble Latin. The
language of Shakespeare is dignified enough for me, without the groundless
prescriptivist contortions. He, like many authors since then, has found that
the natural aesthetic flow of English will sometimes (not always) result in
the preposition most naturally falling at the end of a clause. When that
situation arises, take the opportunity to celebrate the uniqueness of your
native tongue.

~~~
codebaobab
Right. And just to drive the nail in a bit deeper: ending a sentence with a
preposition is a grammatical construction that English gets from its roots as
a Germanic language. German has what are called "separable verbs" where
prepositions are combined with verb roots to create a new verb. In certain
cases, the preposition prefix is split off of the verb and placed at the end
of the sentence. The preposition _must_ come at the end of the sentence in
order to be grammatical. You can see remnants of separable verbs in English:

"I passed the man in the red hat by." pass-by

"I threw all of my old, useless papers out." throw-out

To repeat the parent's point: the stricture against ending a sentence with a
preposition is simply a bias _for_ grammatical structures that English
inherited from Latin (through French) and _against_ structures inherited from
German.

The rule against splitting infinitives falls into the same category. It is not
possible to split an infinitive in Latin because infinitives aren't made up to
two words.

Again, these two rules (and others like them) are about biases, not about
grammatical correctness or even clarity of communication. When you say "Who am
I speaking with?" and "To boldly go where no man has gone before.", no one is
actually left scratching their heads and thinking "I wonder what he means?"

~~~
colanderman
I would never say either of those sentences.

"I passed by the man in the red hat."

"I threw out all of my old, useless papers."

Both of those not only keep the preposition away from the end of the sentence
_and_ keep it near the verb to which it belongs, but most importantly _they
sound more natural_.

Your example of "Who am I speaking with?" follows this same pattern -- "with"
is kept next to the verb "speaking".

------
pluies
Okay, grammatical quibbles aside, this blog post is _scary_.

Harvesting that much information about your customers is creepy and dangerous.
I don't care that it helps your business or that it's technically feasible,
it's just wrong.

~~~
huhtenberg
Definitely, that's why Olark has been firmly sitting on my AdBlock blacklist
from the first time I ran into them.

~~~
bcx
Do you also block Google Analytics?

~~~
shaggyfrog
You can block them and many, many more with Ghostery. I've installed it on all
of my computers/browsers.

<http://www.ghostery.com/>

~~~
huhtenberg

      > Ghostery, a service of Evidon, Inc. All rights reserved.
      > http://www.evidon.com, formerly Better Advertising.
    

Thanks, I appreciate the irony, but _No_

~~~
shaggyfrog
Doesn't bother me. Is this paranoia or something? I mean, who better to know
how to block advertising beacons than a former advertiser?

------
hippo33
That's pretty neat -- sounds really useful for trying to better address a
customer.

------
steverb
I can't decide if the "Whom" in the title is a troll or not. At least the
article gets it right.

~~~
tspiteri
How does the article get it right? If the answer can be "him", the question
should be "whom", and if the answer can be "he", the question should be "who".
Having said that, "Whom am I speaking with?" does sound pretty weird, "With
whom am I speaking?" sounds much better.

~~~
blahedo
That was the traditional rule, but in modern English, "whom" is a particularly
marked usage anywhere except as the immediate object of a pronoun. "With whom
am I speaking?" sounds formal but fine; "Who am I speaking with?" (or
"...to?") is also fine. The form given in the title here is at _best_ overly
formal and stilted. What makes it weird is that it mixes the formal not-after-
a-preposition "whom" with a sentence-ending "with", mixing register in a very
confusing way.

It's like wearing a bow tie and tails with loud bermuda shorts: both are
perfectly acceptable public attire and you might see either on a busy urban
street of an evening, but it's jarring to see them together.

~~~
jmulho
Right. "With whom am I speaking"? sounds stuffy at the beach. "Who am I
speaking with?" sounds lazy at the opera. "Whom am I speaking with?" just
sounds confused.

A similar example that annoys me is the American pronunciation of the wine
Pinot Noir ("PEE-no NWAR"). I say make up your mind. It is either "PEE-no NWA"
as in French, or "PEE-not NWAR". The mixed pronunciation just sounds confused.
Plus, it goes great with peanuts.

~~~
dctoedt
> "PEE-no NWA" as in French

Unless the French language has changed since I lived there, Noir would be
pronounced NWARhh, with a gutteral R.

~~~
jmulho
Ok, there is some kind of faint R in the French, but it definitely doesn't
ryhme with "see no star".

English: <http://inogolo.com/pronunciation/Pinot%20Noir> French:
<http://www.forvo.com/word/pinot_noir/#fr>

