WHO vs. WHOM - What's the Difference? - English Grammar - When to Use Who or Whom

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• published: 30 Aug 2016
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Are you sometimes confused about the difference between who and whom? This lesson will clear that up! In this lesson, you will learn when to use who and whom correctly. While it's true that 'who' is much more common, there are some situations where you should use 'whom' instead of 'who.' We will explore those situations in this lesson, and also look at common prepositional expressions such as 'by whom,' 'from whom,' 'to whom,' 'with whom' and 'for whom.' For more FREE English lessons, SUBSCRIBE to this channel. Transcript: Hey there and welcome back to Learn English Lab. My name is Ganesh and this lesson is all about the difference between who and whom. This is something that a lot of students find confusing - when to use who and when to use whom. In this lesson, I'll show you how to use these correctly. Before we begin, just remember that if you have any questions at all, just let me know in the comments section below and I will talk to you there. OK so let's start. Now who and whom are used in two places - they're used in questions and they're used in relative clauses. First we'll talk about questions and then we will come to relative clauses. If you're not sure what that means, don't worry - I will explain it to you when we get to that part. Now here's the rule with using who and whom - who is used in the place of a subject and whom is used in the place of an object. What do I mean by that? Well take a look at this sentence "Bruce spoke to Betsy." In this sentence we say that Bruce is the subject because Bruce does the action which is speak past tense - spoke. And Betsy is the object because Betsy receives the action. Now some people might argue - is Betsy really the object because there's a 'to' which is a preposition here but you don't have to worry about that. For the purpose of this sentence we'll say that Bruce is the subject and Betsy is the object. Take a look at these two questions over here - there's a blank there - "______ spoke to Betsy?" Here we want to fill in this blank with either who or whom - which is correct? Well if you read the sentence you realize that we know someone spoke to Betsy but we don't know who that someone was. That is we're asking about the subject so the word for the subject is who so Who spoke to Betsy? Now in the second sentence - of course you must be thinking we have to use whom here right? You probably guessed that and that is correct but before we get to that I'm just going to write 'who' over here Now read the sentence "Who did Bruce speak to?" This is actually correct in speaking and in fact when we speak we don't commonly use 'whom.' In speech we almost always use 'who' So this means if you are not sure whether to use who or whom just use who and you will be OK. Alright but I'm going to take the 'who' off. So what about if you want to write something formal or if you want to use proper grammatical form? Well in that case you need to know how to use whom correctly and in this question - if you read it "_____ did Bruce speak to?" Here, we know that Bruce spoke to someone but we want to ask who that someone was - that is we want to ask about the object of the sentence. Remember Betsy? So because we want to ask about the object we have to use whom over here. Before I write whom just notice that there's a 'to' at the end of this question - now in English we have a rule that we don't usually end a question with a preposition like to. These are all prepositions - to, with, by, from, for etc. So if you have a a preposition at the end of a question you have to bring that to the beginning before you write whom. So let's do that - I'm going to put a question mark there To whom did Bruce speak? That is actually the proper grammatical form of that question. So if you're writing something formal, this is how you should write it. OK at this point I'm going to give you a very simple rule that you can use in all situations to decide whether to use who or whom, and the rule is this - when you're making a question, think about the answer to that question. If the answer can be him, her or them, then you use whom. OK so if the answer can be him, her or them, you use 'whom.' So to this question To whom did Bruce speak?, we can say Bruce spoke to him, Bruce spoke to her Bruce spoke to them. OK so if there's an 'm' in the answer then you put 'm' in the question- this is a my 'm-whom' rule. But let's go back to this first sentence Here you cannot answer with him, her or them - if someone asks "Who spoke to Betsy?" you cannot say him spoke to Betsy, her spoke to Betsy, them spoke to Betsy - that doesn't sound right. But here, you can say He spoke to Betsy or "She spoke Betsy" so If the answer can be he, she or they, that is, there's no 'm' in the answer there's no 'm' in the question. Alright, with this rule in mind, let's now do the next couple of questions and this time i want you to give me the correct question word.