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English whom | ||
Tags: Morphology | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5569 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 9 of 63 18 December 2013 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Whom is not old fashioned, I use it all the time - but I think it is class and region
specific. I have noticed that it is more common amongst the privately educated rather than those who went to state schools. If that is the case, I don't know how I picked it up, but it goes to show the relevance of socio-linguistics in these discussions. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5232 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 10 of 63 18 December 2013 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I do hear "whom" often. It's certainly used by a minority of native English speakers, but not a negligible minority.
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| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4776 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 11 of 63 18 December 2013 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
me. I don't recall ever having been drilled on when to use "who" and when to use "whom". I just internalized the difference the same way I rationalized the distinction between "I" and "me": the former corresponds to the Russian nominative and the latter - to the oblique cases. I know that in learning another language it's generally not a good idea to put more trust in your grammatical intuition from your native language than in the grammatical senses of the vast majority of the native speakers of your target language, but if we're just limiting it to a feature inherited from a common ancestor language that still has some presence in the prescribed standard language, then why not? I've grown accustomed to the fact that most speakers don't make the distinction, but it does grate on my ears whenever someone uses "whom" where "who" would have been prescriptively correct, both because of my grammatical intuition and because the person is clearly only using the word to sound better educated than they actually are. The only case where I don't always spot the mistake instantly is whenever the word "whomever" is used. There isn't a direct equivalent to this word in Russian, so I usually have to pause and think what exactly is supposed to be the subject and the object in this case. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4626 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 12 of 63 18 December 2013 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Even though many native English speakers rarely - if ever - use whom. It still exists in set phrases like "to whom it may concern"
I notice that in German many people avoid the genetive case in everyday speech but it still pops up in common terms like "eines Tages" Edited by beano on 18 December 2013 at 4:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4537 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 13 of 63 18 December 2013 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think it's that rare. It just depends a bit on your age, where you learnt English, and your level of English. I have heard the genitive case is slowly dying out in Germany too. So it's probably a bit similar, though of course the genitive is used a lot more than "whom". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7160 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 63 18 December 2013 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've experienced something similar to vonPeterhof even though I'm a native speaker of English. All the exposure to several languages has made distinguishing "who" from "whom" in addition to other traits my default setting in English, so to speak. See my reply to Languages changing your native language 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6601 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 15 of 63 18 December 2013 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was taught to use whom and I use it :-) I also fairly frequently see it online, especially in UK English maybe?
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5060 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 16 of 63 18 December 2013 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
"Me" is used in any situation except for the situation when the subject is just before the verb. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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