Who-whom smackdown
Pop over to Visual Thesaurus for a point/counterpoint on the survival of whom, but don’t expect much in the way of fireworks between Professor Arnold Zwicky and me, craven defeatist and fellow-traveler of linguists that I am.
The comments, particularly those from the readers who have difficulty in identifying humor, even when it is labeled as such, provide the fun.
Comments
Isn't "who are you" the correct form, anyways? If you flip it around--you are who--isn't the correct form a predicate nominative (who) because of the presence of a form of the verb to be (or what we used to call copulative verbs when I was in school)?
Posted by: Sally Burke | July 24, 2008 9:34 AM
Nice essay, John. My conclusion from the comments: The disappearance of "whom" is far less lamentable than the disappearance of people able to read (and understand) Thurber. Come back, Dave Barry, and remind them that joking about usage is OK!
Posted by: Jan Freeman | July 24, 2008 6:55 PM
The confusion sprang from the fact that most of those people didn't comprehend the word "burlesque" as a verb.
Posted by: Talley Sue Hohlfeld | July 25, 2008 3:20 PM
Good stuff, though it's a pity that so few of us read Thurber these days.
I don't have strong feelings about "who" and "whom" (except in speaking, where "whom" sounds stilted unless it follows a preposition), but I do wish someone would drive a stake through the heart of "whomever," which I see just about every week in edited prose, and always where traditional usage would be "whoever."
Posted by: Alan Gunn | July 27, 2008 3:14 PM