

Dear people-who-run-Twitter, whom to follow, whom - ralph
https://twitter.com/VictoriaCoren/status/20509320497

======
languagehacker
As a linguist, I can say resolutely that your prescriptivism is basically
pounding your fists against the immovable brick wall of change. All types of
case are rapidly disappearing from English. It's a continuing trend and has
been for hundreds of years. The ambiguity generated is a trade-off people make
for a variety of conveniences, let alone to fit in.

The subjunctive mood is basically gone from practiced speech, too. None of it
is terribly worth lamenting.

In fact, changing it to "whom" would do nothing more than alienate its large-
scale market, who aren't all leather elbow pads and Strunk & White, but rather
real people who exercise language outside of the confines of a book report.

Sorry, dude. It's just not worth getting bent out of shape about.

~~~
Hexstream
The _immovable_ brick wall of _change_? That doesn't sound right...

~~~
boredguy8
I think that's the point. Good writing often doesn't make sense on a literal
level. Apart from this, my favorite example from recently: "and with Kevin
Garnett and the newly-signed Jermaine O’Neal, Danny Ainge has just
successfully assembled the greatest collection of big men in the history of
2002." [http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2010/08/luke-harangody-
boston-...](http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2010/08/luke-harangody-boston-and-
gathering.html)

~~~
BrandonM
Without Shaq's name in there, I had to read the article in order to understand
the humor of the quote: the Celtics now have Shaq and Jermaine O'Neal and
Kevin Garnett all on one team; in 2002 (when they were near their collective
prime), that collection of big men would have been unstoppable.

------
m0nty
To come back with a predictable response: everyone says "who" even if they
mean "whom". Using "whom", even if it is grammatically correct, is perceived
to be wrong in most conversational situations, or other informal situations
like Twitter.

Anyway, the quick guide: if you would say "him/her", use "whom", and if you
would say "he/she", use "who".

"Who is that?" ... "He is the programmer."

"To whom is the message addressed?" ... "It is addressed to him."

He -> Who / Him -> Whom

But who wouldn't say "Who is it addressed to?" You'd sound like the posh bloke
from an Ealing Comedy if you used "whom" all the time.

~~~
ralph
You might sound like Inspector Morse; he was repeatedly correcting Lewis. Here
in England, "everyone" doesn't say "who" when they mean "whom".

~~~
m0nty
What, _that_ Ralph Corderoy, one-time of the PCG? You should be able to work
out who I am from my username ;)

Anyway, I can't remember when I last heard someone use "whom" outside of
slightly cheesy television series like Morse...

~~~
ralph
Almost certainly that one. Mr Burns, is that you? You've had me accessing bits
that hadn't been scrubbed in a long time and have suffered some rot. Have you
just arrived at number 63 or just left? There's a Dorset LUG if you're
interested.

Morse can be cheesy, but I thought it was a cultural reference that Americans
may know. :-)

~~~
m0nty
Sent email, rather than doing our correspondence here :] Left Dorset last
year, now in Hampshire again.

------
petercooper
William Safire said it best:

 _"The best rule for dealing with who vs. whom is this: Whenever whom is
required, recast the sentence. This keeps a huge section of the hard disk of
your mind available for baseball averages."_

Put this in the "most people don't care" bin along with the subjunctive mood,
which I see intelligent people failing to use more often than not.

~~~
Terretta
I wish I were in a subjunctive mood.

------
omaranto
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the who/whom distinction in North
American English has been ignored so much for a long enough period of time to
say that ignoring it is now correct. On the other hand, the distinction is
still commonly observed in British English, I think. So basically Victoria
Coren is asking twitter to rewrite things in her dialect. I guess she's free
to ask. And maybe they _should_ do some internationalization...

~~~
liedra
Just because lazy people in North America couldn't be bothered working it out
any more doesn't mean Twitter shouldn't set a good example. Ignoring it is not
correct, the distinction is correct. It's not a dialect, either, given that
it's, uh, the original.

~~~
viraptor
Given that there already is an official distinction between "American English"
and "British English", I don't think your comment is very correct. It might be
just another rule to add (actually remove) in the A.E. schoolbooks.

Languages evolve. If enough people drop "whom" in America, arguing about this
change would be like arguing about whether sweets or candy is "correct".

~~~
liedra
This still doesn't make it a dialect though :) Sorry, but it just annoys me to
see American English fanatics say how British English is "wrong", or a
"dialect" of American English when it was the original base of American
English to start with :)

I do agree with you, languages evolve. But that doesn't mean we should just
drop grammar altogether. I was a little snappy in my original response, and I
apologise for that, but the sentiment is still the same.

~~~
nollidge
Saying American English evolved from British English is just as false as the
reverse, and just as false as saying humans evolved from monkeys. Both evolved
from a common ancestor. British English has changed just as much as American
English has since they began to split in the 17-18th centuries.

~~~
knotty66
I've heard it said that modern American English is closer to that common
ancestor than modern British English.

~~~
Terretta
Visit Tangier island in Tidewater Virginia:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidewater_accent>

Also visit the Guineas:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester_County,_Virginia#Gui...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester_County,_Virginia#Guinea)

------
jjcm
Often times proper grammar isn't the best approach from a marketing
standpoint. Look at apple's use of, "the funnest _ yet" slogans that they used
for a while. Catering to the most commonly used vernacular is generally a
better strategy from a marketing perspective.

I'm going out on a limb here, but my bet is that the mistake is on purpose.

~~~
electromagnetic
Depending on your target demographic obviously. If you're aiming for the
general market then you're absolutely right, you'll hit more birds with your
stones if you talk to people on their level. However, if you're aiming college
grads or PhD grads, you're probably going to annoy them if you're letting
grammatical errors enter your marketing.

I've closed BBC news articles when there's been a grammatical mistake in the
first paragraph. I didn't pay my License Fee in the UK for them to abuse it
with bad news.

~~~
waqf
I have to say that the BBC news has more spelling and grammar errors per
thousand words than most blogs I read.

... now let me try desperately to bring this back on topic by saying that I
think the thread above blaming Britain for grammatical prescriptivism is way
off. Strunk and White popularized some prescriptions unknown in the UK (such
as not using "which" in the role of "that") and in my thoroughly anecdotal
experience Americans spell [by the conventions of the country they're in]
significantly better than Brits do.

------
ralph
Victoria Coren's had an interesting career. Writer, TV presenter, including
_Balderdash and Piffle_ connected to the Oxford English Dictionary, poker
player, and porn film maker, though just the once. It's nice to see see
someone well known, in the UK at least, show their pedant side. Hopefully, her
appearance on news.yc will make twitter take note. :-)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Coren>

------
anamax
If the fans of BE want to win these things, they need to work on the Indians,
not the Americans. (The US doesn't look to the UK for language lessons. We
fight amongst ourselves.) Of course, even winning the "world-wide English"
wars may not be enough to influence Americans.

BTW - Does French or German have these problems?

~~~
tjarratt
I can't speak on the issue of the German language, but France has the Académie
Française, whose job it is to standardize the language and approve new
changes. They carry no legal clout, but where they go, the french language
usually follows.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise#Fu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise#Functions)

~~~
avibryant
The "French language" may follow, but the Quebecois sure don't... (so, yes,
French has exactly the same issue).

------
Raphael
While you're at it, put "following" before the number to distinguish it better
from "followers".

------
wccrawford
I'm not convinced that it should be 'whom'. It's a sentence fragment. It's not
a subject or an object of a sentence. Replacing 'who' with 'he' or 'him' makes
no sense either way.

And lastly: It's not a novel or paper. It's just a quick phrase used
artistically. With 'whom' is sounds stuffy and out of place. 'Who' sounds
correct in the context, and hits the target audience.

~~~
ralph
You test with "he" versus "him" in the reply to the question, not by replacing
"who/whom" in the question itself. So the answer to "whom to follow" is
"follow him", not "follow he".

------
jcsalterego
The same goes for Facebook's blatant abuse of the neuter singular "their"
instead of "his/her" -- which really can be resolved most of the time since
Facebook usually possess people's genders.

Anyway...

------
kmfrk
It doesn't bother me on an American website. On a British website, I would
notice it, but foregoing "whom" is an old American tradition.

~~~
waqf
I wouldn't point this out in a discussion on any other topic (honest), but you
mean "forgoing" (going without), not "foregoing" (previous).

~~~
kmfrk
Thanks for the disambiguation. HN keeps me posting at the weirdest hours of
the day for some reason.

