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Quote:

when do we use 'who' and 'whom'..., I don't remember the difference in their usage nor where I had the rules written..., probably I don't have them anymore. Does it work like accusative in Latin or German?

Who and Whom is really simple:

If it's in the nominative (a subject, or anything after the verb 'to be' -- predicate nominative and predicate adjective) use who. If it's anything else use whom (accusative, dative, propositional, etc).

So yes, it's the same as Latin and the wen, wem of German.

This is one of two areas in English that have retained cases -- the other of course being pronouns (I versus Me and He versus him, etc).

No fancy explanaitions needed. That's really it.



Last edited by Lexicon on Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:44 am; edited 1 time in total

History - Why is it whom anyway?

English has gone through many changes over the past thousand years. In Old English all words had case endings. This included pronouns. All pronouns (including interrogative or question pronouns) had case endings. These endings changed depending on whether the word was in the Nominative, Accusative, Dative, or Genitive cases.

As time passed English began to lose some of its spelling changes and case endings. By the time of Middle English (what Shakespeare and Chaucer used) most of the case endings were gone but a few remained.

Modern English has removed all case endings except for those used with pronouns, and has only kept some of those. See the chart below:



* Remember that in Old English the vowels had different sounds than they do today. Also notice that the HW and WH spellings were reversed. Until about 100 years ago words like ‘who’, ‘where’ and ‘which’ were all pronounced with an /h/ before the /w/ sound.


So today we still have:

1. Who for subjects and the nominative case.
2. Whom for objects and indirect objects.
3. Whose for possession.



Last edited by Lexicon on Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:45 am; edited 1 time in total

Examples

Nominative Case

Who is at the store?
Who is the subject of the sentence.

He is the man who stole my hat.
or
The man who stole my hat is over there.
In these sentences who is further describing the subject.

Who is the owner of this car?
In this example who is a predicate nominative, meaning that it restates the subject of ‘owner’. Predicate nominatives always come before or after the verb ‘to be’.


Accusative Case

You saw whom?
or
Whom did you see?
Whom is the direct object of the two sentences and calls for the accusative case.


Dative Case

He gave whom the book?
or
He gave the book to whom?
or
To whom did he give the book?
or
Whom did he give the book to?
In the above sentences whom tells us the recipient of the object that was given (the book). The first sentence uses whom as an indirect object and places it in the dative case. The dative case can also be expressed by using the preposition ‘to’. In the final three sentences whom is used as the object of the preposition ‘to’. Notice that even if the object (whom) of the preposition is separated from the preposition itself, the case stays the same.


Genitive Case

Whose book is on the table?
Or
Tom gave John whose book?
The genitive case is used to express possession. In these two sentences it tells us the owner of the book. In the first sentence the question asks who owns the book on the table. The second sentence asks who owns the book that Tom gave to John.