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I happened to watch a lecturer was explaining word order of English in the beginners’ English learning course in NHK’s - Japan’s largest and publicly-owned broadcasting network – educational TV program (aired on July 23rd). He showed four cubes, each of which showing the word, “Who”, “You” “Help” “Do” placed at random, and asked students to put the cubes in the right order:

Right answer: Who Do You Help?

I was comfortable with “Who do you help (speak / give / write, and so on) too, but a question arose:

Is “Whom do you help?” grammatically wrong or, obsolete? If so, why is it wrong, how and around when it became obsolete?

I’ve never seriously thought of such question as the declension of a dative pronoun in interrogative form until I hit upon the above TV scene. Taking advantage of this opportunity, I ventured to post a beginner’s question.

Yoichi Oishi
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    They're both grammatical, but the use of whom has declined in modern English, to the point where substantial portions of the speech community actually follow different rules for its use because they use it so seldom. Since Anglophone schools teach their students nothing about English grammar (except what to avoid, for no reason anybody ever mentions), people have pretty much given it up as too much trouble. Consider: when you start a clause with whom, you're announcing that an object of some kind is coming up, though you haven't even given the verb yet. That takes a lot of processing. – John Lawler Jul 27 '18 at 01:56
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    It's a beautifully composed question but it's been asked so so many many times before. I'm confused, have you never read any of these answers? – Mari-Lou A Jul 27 '18 at 09:53
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    Related and closed for being a duplicate: Who do you want to talk to? Whom do you want to talk to? and this Q: Dative whom with accusative who The only significant difference between these questions and yours is that you're asking "why". – Mari-Lou A Jul 27 '18 at 10:00
  • @Mari-Lou. I appreciate your usual attention to my post. I haven'’t used to check other users’ posts before posting a question. I don’t know how to do it. I've always puzzled how you guys could find a single duplicate out of the sea of past questions. I come to know that my question duplicates with previous posts only when alerted by other users, or when I find a caption of the similar question in the “Related” box on the right hand of the page, which I noticed today for the first time.The present post was simply triggered by coincidence of my watching a lesson on – Yoichi Oishi Jul 27 '18 at 11:03
  • Continued: the English word order in the NHK’s English learning program a few days ago as I wrote in the present post, and no more than that. If you blame my post as a duplicate, I don’t mind to delete this question. Deletion of a single question out of more than 1000 posts of mine to date doesn’t matter to me at all. But if I do so, I miss many excellent answers and comments given to this question so far by all good-hearted users (particularly highly valuable imput on reference sources given by L.Scott Johnson) as well as 600 plus users who have read the question. – Yoichi Oishi Jul 27 '18 at 11:05
  • Questions cannot be deleted by their owners if they have received answers that have been upvoted, it would be unfair to the users who posted their solutions/explanations. But it is best that visitors are directed to the post with the best and most supported answers. None of the answers posted here, so far, include any references. John Lawler is an esteemed linguist, so he could have posted an answer but he chose not to. We now have the not unusual situation where the comment (upvoted) and the Community Wiki post are both present on the same page. – Mari-Lou A Jul 27 '18 at 11:17
  • @Mari-LouA - I would suggest that it might be better to allow deleting questions with upvoted answers, but in the deletion process, allow the upvotes to be retained by those who answered the question. That we don't do that now, doesn't mean it couldn't (or shouldn't) be changed to work that way. With that in mind, it comes down to the pros and cons of keeping the duplicate questions at all. I'm not suggesting that should be discussed here, but only that the retention of upvotes really doesn't justify it on its own. – Kevin Fegan Jul 27 '18 at 16:50
  • @KevinFegan no, I don't think that's a suitable solution. Sometimes users spend hours crafting the perfect answer and to see that swept away and trashed because they inadvertently answered a duplicate question, would be almost cruel. Here, Yoichi Oishi is not asking "how" but "why", which gives it a slightly different slant to the 100+ questions about who vs. whom. And the question is beautifully presented, you can't fault it. – Mari-Lou A Jul 27 '18 at 17:01
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    Possible duplicate of What’s the rule for using “who” and “whom” correctly? – Arm the good guys in America Jul 27 '18 at 19:47

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In a comment, John Lawler wrote:

They're both grammatical, but the use of whom has declined in modern English, to the point where substantial portions of the speech community actually follow different rules for its use because they use it so seldom. Since Anglophone schools teach their students nothing about English grammar (except what to avoid, for no reason anybody ever mentions), people have pretty much given it up as too much trouble. Consider: when you start a clause with whom, you're announcing that an object of some kind is coming up, though you haven't even given the verb yet. That takes a lot of processing.

tchrist
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"Whom do you help?" is correct. But many English speakers use "who" wherever they should use "whom".

References:

Link

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/who-vs-whom-its-not-as-complicated-as-you-might-think/

https://www.diffen.com/difference/Who_vs_Whom

https://www.dummies.com/education/language-arts/grammar/choosing-when-to-use-who-and-whom/

Glorfindel
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L. Scott Johnson
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    By "should", you probably mean "could". – Omar and Lorraine Jul 27 '18 at 07:46
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    Indeed "could" not "should". The only people speaking British English who would use "whom" in that sentence are pedants. "Whom" seems to linger on more in US English - along with other things that have been obsolete in BrE for hundreds of years, like "gotten". – alephzero Jul 27 '18 at 09:15
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    Please consider adding references, citations, etc. This will make your answer infinitely more helpful and better-supported. – Mari-Lou A Jul 27 '18 at 10:06
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    @alephzero I ~regularly talk to a British barrister who still uses whom. So you're wrong. (When I asked him about it, he said he's not being pedantic at all; in fact he makes spelling mistakes/typos all the time, for instance, and his speech isn't very formal either.) –  Jul 27 '18 at 11:08
  • @Mari-LouA - Thanks. I've edited my answer to include references. – L. Scott Johnson Jul 27 '18 at 14:09
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    @alephzero I still say "gotten", and sometimes "whom", and although I'm sometimes a pedant I don't feel that I am deliberately being one on those occasions. I'm also note hundreds of years old yet (working on it!) – Lightness Races in Orbit Jul 27 '18 at 16:34
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    @user2684291. It is very definitely used in legal texts where everything should be more than crystal clear, so I'm not that suprised to hear of a British barrister using it in his every day speech too. – S Conroy Jul 27 '18 at 16:40
  • @alephzero - ""Whom" seems to linger on more in US English" From a personal point of view, with respect to "Whom", I'd have to disagree. I'm in the US (Chicago area), and having reached well past half way to my "expiration date", I have never used "whom" in a (written or spoken) sentence (ooops, well, up until now). And I've never heard it used in a sentence spoken by others, except when debating the "who/whom" issue. "gotten" is another matter, what's wrong with "gotten"? – Kevin Fegan Jul 27 '18 at 17:02
  • @KevinFegan My US experience is quite different. I use "whom" quite a bit (although I often use "who" in its place by mistake as well), and have heard it used (and heard it replaced by "who") all my life (and I, too, have passed the halfway mark). – L. Scott Johnson Jul 27 '18 at 17:05
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It is grammatically correct. In spoken English in Ireland and the UK it is actually over-correct and can sound either pedantic or ironic. In the U.S. and Australia, however, I've been told it is more commonly used in speech.

S Conroy
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First off, "whom do you help" is technically correct because 'who' is the object in that sentence, and 'who' gets inflected to 'whom' when it is the object.

However 'Whom' is an interesting word in the English language. It is a remnant from a time (old English probably) when nouns were inflected. English pronouns are the only system that retains this archaic rule, which is now non-productive, ie all new nouns coined are not inflected based on their role in the sentence.

Like others have said, it would sound pedantic or ironic in casual conversation. Personally I consider it obsolete in all informal conversations, and even most formal conversations. Others disagree and stick to grammar rules assiduously.

Jamie Clinton
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because modern english is an analytical language that relies on word order for grammer; old english was an inflected language where nouns where extensively declined; but the inflections have been mostly lost; other then a few vestiges in the pronouns; and make no mistake; those vestiges are useless; old english could vary the word order and say the same thing; but modern english; even when the vestiges are in a sentence; cannot; for example if someone says "him see I"; that sentence probably sounds like an uneducated mess to you; it does to me; but not for the tiniest fraction of a second do you think that i was saying "I saw him" and using unusual word order; no native english speaker would think that; proving that you are actually relying on the word order; not the pronoun only case forms; in languages where all nouns have case that is possible; english is in the process of loosing its cases; and "whom" is the next to go in that process; if you think it is a usefull distinction; then use all 5 old english cases as declined in beowulf.

noah johnson
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