Who versus whom | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

Hello grammarians! Welcome to one of the thorniest fights in English usage today: the question of whether or not you should use "who" or "whom" in a sentence as a relative pronoun.

So there's this basic idea that "who" is the subject form, and "whom" is the object form. This means that if we're talking about someone who is the doer, then we say "who," as in "the spy who loved me," as opposed to someone who is the dewy, the object, as in "the spy whom I loved."

You see, because in this sentence "who" is the subject, and in this sentence "I" is the subject, "me" is the object, and "whom" is the object. I loved whom? In this sentence, I am doing the loving; in this sentence, it is the spy who is doing the loving. That's the basic rule.

However, this does not adequately reflect the way our culture actually uses and has used "whom" or "who" for some time. In many cases, it has become permissible to use "who" as an object. Let me show you what I mean.

The thing to remember is that the basic rule is a one-way street, because the way language is changing, "whom" is on its way out. I imagine in another 50 to 75 years, we won't be using it at all. Is that sad? Sure, a little bit. I mean, I'm sad that nobody ever uses the pronoun "husso," as in "who so pulleth this sword from this stone is rightwise born king of England." We don't use that anymore; it's old-fashioned.

Now we say "whoever," and that's okay. So we know that the basic rule is that you use "who" as a subject and "whom" as an object, but you can also now use "who" as an object. The only thing you can't do is use "whom" as a subject. That's the thing you need to remember: "whom's" use is not expanding; it is contracting. "Who" is taking over some of "whom's" duties.

Let's go back to that spy example. Here are the four possible options: "the spy who loved me," "the spy whom loved me," "the spy who I loved," and "the spy whom I loved." Of these, only the second is incorrect because we're trying to use "whom" as a subject. In the case of "the spy who I loved," where "who" is being an object by the informal rules of our grammar today, this is fine. Either of these is fine; the only one that's not fine is "the spy whom loved me," because this language change is going in one direction: towards "whom" being used less often.

So "whom" never expands from its original position; "who" does. The next time you're puzzling over what to do in the event of the sentence "Who are you talking to?" and whether or not this pronoun here should be "who" or "whom," it's really an issue of tone rather than correctness because both possibilities are equally understandable.

Yes, technically, if you wanted to be very correct, you would say "Whom are you talking to?" or "You are talking to whom?" because "whom" is the object of this preposition—it's "to whom," and therefore we would use the object form. You find that when you separate it out in this question, when you put the two at the end and the "whom" question particle at the beginning, this "m" just kind of falls away.

We're more likely to use "whom" when it's immediately preceded by a preposition, but otherwise, it's probably more likely going to be "who," which is why it's not that big of a deal to say "Who are you talking to?" It's not technically correct, but it's been used for so long that it's fine.

"You are talking to who" is a little bit more formal of a construction and therefore you would probably want to use "whom." Saying "you are talking to who" is not as common.

So, in this wild swamp of rule-breaking, there is one hard grammar rule to pay attention to, and it's just never use "whom" as a subject. The role of "whom" in our constellation of pronouns is decreasing, not expanding. "Who" is taking over "whom," and since "who" is the subject, "whom" is not moving into that space. "Whom" is the object pronoun, and you use it when you're feeling fancy.

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