Who and whom revisited

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Friday October 16, 2009

Who and whom revisited

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I refer to Kengt’s response on the use of “who” and “whom” in Mind Our English, Sept 18 which was in reference to another query in MOE on Aug 27. I appreciate what Kengt was trying to do, but his explanation might not go down well with the man on the street.

Let me explain it in simple terms:

“Who” usually takes a verb after it.

e.g: He is the man who helped me yesterday.

Notice “who” is followed by the verb “helped”.

Whom usually takes a noun after it.

e.g: Sally is a friend whom we have known for 20 years.

Notice “whom” is followed by the noun “we”.

Perhaps this simple explanation would help. – Joseph David

Note from Fadzilah Amin: Joseph David’s answer to Kengt, says that “who” usually takes a verb after it and “whom” usually takes a noun. This rule, in my opinion, is too simplistic. Even in his example, “Sally is a friend whom we have known for 20 years.” “we” is NOT a noun but a pronoun.

Even if we modify the rule to: “ ‘Who’ usually takes a verb after it and ‘whom’ usually takes a noun or a pronoun.”, we would not be correct. Look at this heading on a BBC website:

“Who’s backing whom in US race?”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/ 7227350.stm

“Who” is indeed followed by the noun (this should actually be verb) “is”, but “whom” is followed by a preposition – “in”.

And take this quotation: “This is called the ‘cultural village’ and is full of people who are associated with culture, a lot of whom work with the Sierra Leone Dance Troupe ...”

http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=51&catID=9

“Whom” here is followed by a verb.

As to Kengt’s statement that we should not “concern ourselves so much with informal usage”, I disagree with this.

When it comes to using British English, we can sound too formal (i.e. stilted) when we use “whom” in certain situations.

For example, it sounds more natural to say “Who are you travelling with?” instead of “With whom are you travelling?”

Another example can be drawn from the name of the BBC investigation mentioned in the following quotation:

“They will feature in the first part of the three-part BBC investigation, entitled Who’s Watching Who?”

http://www.thisisdorset.net/news/tidnews/4317615.Spied_upon_mum_from_Poole_in_BBC_documentary/

“Who’s watching who?” does not follow Oh Teik Theam’s guide, quoted by Kengt, because when translated into personal pronouns, we could say, for example, “We are watching them.” and so the second “who” ought to be “whom” in a formal style, as in “Who’s backing whom in US race?” that I quoted earlier. But the BBC opted for the less formal style for the name of their programme.

There is more to the use of “who” and “whom” in British English than can be summed up in a sentence or two.

But for those learners who may be confused about when to use “who” and when to use “whom”, it may be safer to stick to Oh Teik Theam’s guide.

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The above are the responses to my newspaper article posted in this blog on September 28, 2009.

Note from Fadzilah Amin has claimed that I made the statement that we should not “concern ourselves so much with informal usage”. This appears arbitrary to me based on the following points.

(A) Quoting a book, I did say, "In practice, “who” is widely used in both roles (subject and object), especially in speech; “whom” is regarded as rather formal."

(B) I did say, "Perhaps, some writers indulge in informal usages, sometimes, for being natural or for fluency.

(C) That we do not concern ourselves so much with informal usage is merely a suggestion to those who have confusion which can be compounded by concern over informal usage.

‘A few’ or ‘few’

A reader's question: I’m a little confused as to when to use “a few” and “few”. For example, we can write “We saw a few pelicans on the beach” or “We saw few pelicans on the beach”. Could you please explain the usage?

Answer: When you write “We saw a few pelicans on the beach.” it means you saw a small number of pelicans there. But when you write “We saw few pelicans on the beach.”, it means you expected to see more pelicans, but you only saw “few”, which in your sentence means “not enough” or “not many”.

The above question and answer appear, among others, in a column promoting the correct use of English of a popular national English daily.

Not convinced over the explanations given for the seond sentence, I have sent my following comments to the editor without receiving any response:-

What is explained above is in line with the definitions of 'few' in any dictionary.

However, many including myself understand the second sentence with the definitions of 'few' in thesaurus (http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/few) which are (as an adjective) hardly any and (as a pronoun) scarcely any.

Following up on "Commensurate"

My posting of August 24, 2009 has stated that the word "Commensurate" is not a verb but an adjective as can be seen from a newspaper article titled Verbs gone astray by a Dr. Lim.

There is a need for the Sports Ministry, sponsors and the Association to check the slide for the under achievements which does not commensurate with the funds injected.

The preceding sentence is taken from a newspaper with "commensurate" therein again used as a verb apart from the irregularity of matching the plural noun of achievements with a singular helping verb of does.

The sentence should have been written as "There is a need for the Sports Ministry, sponsors and the Association to check the slide for the under achievements which are not commensurate with the funds injected.

Follow up on when to use who, whom

In my last posting of September 28, I mentioned that the use of “who” or “whom” had confused many including experienced writers who would often go wrong if they were not vigilant enough.

Below are some examples noticed in a newspaper and are listed to help illustrating the correct usages.

(A) You married a man whom you believe you love despite family objections.

(B) The first version was that Chew had scolded Lim's friends whom he felt had taken advantage of his buddy.

(C) Inspector Saad was in CID and had a girlfriend, whom we believed he got pregnant.

These "you believe", "he felt" and "we believed" appearing in the above three sentences are all parenthetical clauses or parentheses, which, if noted by you and taken away, will help you to determine whether the three whom's are used correctly.

In (A), the test question is "you love him" or "you love he". Obviously, the former is correct and hence "whom" is correctly used.

In (B), which is correct - them had taken advantage or they had taken advantage? The pronoun "they" is clearly the only choice and so, "whom" therein should be "who".

In (C), you ask "he got her pregnant" or he got she pregnant". Needless to say, the former is the right one and so is the "whom" in the sentence.