Who and Whom Jingle

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good day to you.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Philip Trincetta in San Diego.

Hi, Philip, how you doing?

Hi, I’m Arthur.

Hello.

I want to first thank you both for keeping the spirit and enthusiasm of language forefront in our minds. I appreciate it.

Oh, well, thank you. It’s our pleasure.

You’re a linguophile then?

Not really.

I’m a chiropractic physician, but I like to play with language and test my patients out on different words.

No, wait.

How are you spelling patients?

Both ways.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

You sound like one of us.

Well, how can we help you today?

Today, my question is, a few weeks ago, you did the show on When and Whenever, and that provoked me to want to ask about who and whom yet again.

Mm—

And I ask my patients about that, and nobody has an answer for it.

Mm—

And my question is, is the word whom being eliminated from our language?

And then my second question is, don’t you have something like I before E except before V?

Oh.

Like a little rhyme for who and whom.

Oh.

That’s a good point.

Wouldn’t that be terrific if we did?

I know.

Oh, man.

Well, I could try to come up with one, but it would probably be as long as the charge of the light brigade or something.

I mean, it’s…

Who and whom? What’s your elevator pitch on who and whom, Martha?

First of all, I would agree with Philip that whom is probably on the way out.

Maybe not in our lifetime, but I think it’s becoming sort of a vestigial kind of thing.

You know, I’m sure you studied vestigial things in the body, like the appendix.

Yeah, or our little toes, you know.

But right now, it’s still around in our language, but it’s very tricky.

And as far as I know, there is no clever little rhyme to tell us how to do this, partly because it’s really complicated.

So you just have to remember kind of some of the parts of speech to know the difference, right?

Exactly.

I mean, the short version is that in the history of the English language, it used to be that the language was inflected.

You know the term flexion, of course, because you’re a chiropractor, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

And the English language used to be more inflected.

That is, that nouns would bend at the end and have different endings.

And so we had who and whom and different versions, depending on how you’re using the word in the sentence.

But it is changing.

And I would give you three ideas to keep in mind, Philip.

One of which is that you’re always going to use whom when it’s the object of a preposition, right?

Correct.

Like for whom the bell tolls, to whom it may concern.

I’m going to lunch with my colleagues, one of whom, blah, blah, blah.

That’s always going to be whom.

Okay.

Good, good.

It’s also the object of a verb, the man whom I treated, or whom did you see yesterday in your office.

There it’s the object of the verb, right?

Meaning that the verb acted on that noun that came after it.

Yes.

Okay.

And the other place is where it is the subject of the infinitive.

Are you on Twitter, Phil?

I am, but I’m really not.

Okay.

Well, I don’t blame you because when you fire up the Twitter program, it says right there, who to follow.

And then it lists people to follow on Twitter.

You mean when you load the webpage?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, it says who to follow, and then it gives you a list of people who might be interesting to you on Twitter.

And that’s wrong.

It’s not who to follow.

It’s whom to follow because it goes with the infinitive there.

Did you write and tell them that?

You know, it’s painful for me.

Is it painful for you, Phil?

It is painful for me because they don’t get it right.

Exactly.

Right.

And that one’s sort of a no-brainer, don’t you think?

So you’ve got the three cases where I should use whom, and then can we safely say that the other cases I should use who?

You know, what I would say, Grant, is that this is a problem that vexes even the best, most careful writers.

And without going into a jingle or a poem that goes on for a hundred lines, what I would say is, in other cases, go by instinct.

Go by what feels right.

Sometimes whom can sound very stilted, you know?

I have seen it misused where whom should be used.

Right. And it gets really tricky.

And, Philip, honestly, it messes me up, too.

So I don’t know if I’ve been helpful, Philip.

What do you think?

I think that maybe you were helpful.

Yes, in a way you were, because I know it’s an object of a verb.

The bottom line is that I’m going to continue asking my patients when we have word chat what they think, and I’m positive none of them will have it right.

Well, you sound like a chiropractor whom I would like to visit.

Oh, if you ever come my way, you’re more than welcome to come by.

We’ll bring you flowers for your paws.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us about the struggles of language that you’re experiencing, 877-929-9673, or email us with your questions to words@waywordradio.org.