|
It helps to have taken a language that rely on cases (i.e. syntactic relationships of a noun), like German, Italian, Greek, or Latin. Whom is used when it's refering to the object of the sentence (the dative/objective case), and Who is when it's the subject of the sentence (the nominative case). Usually 'whom' follows a preposition (like to, by, from, with, in, etc.), so that should give you a clue about whether it's the subject or object of a sentence.
You can tell which is the subject by figuring out who or what is doing the action (the verb), and which is the object by figuring out who or what receives the action.
First, simplify things by replacing the nouns with a pronoun:
he, she, they = who (subjective/nominative case)
him, her, them = whom (objective/dative case)
his, her, their = whose (possesive/genitive case)
Here are some examples in a statement and question form:
The man who called me is my boss. (He called me.)
Who called me? The man called me.
"The man" is the subject, and "me" is the object. "Who" is used with the subject.
The man whom I called is my boss. (I called him.)
Whom did I call? I called the man.
"I" is the subject, and "the man" is the object. "Whom" is used with the object.
I think in this day and age it's become linguistically acceptable to either use who or whom whether you're using it as the subject or object, since the English language pretty much doesn't follow any strict casing rules (as a few people have already mentioned). Whom and Who are basically the remnants of how the language evolved from casing, where the word is declined/modified to explain the relationship of the word to the noun. In English, case (and I don't mean upper and lower) doesn't matter because meaning is derived from the order and position of the words, which more or less remain static, whereas in a language like Greek, the subject can be placed practically anywhere in the sentence, and the function of the words depend on how words around it are declined.
__________________
"inhuman fiery goat worship" is an anagram for "information superhighway" -kingvolc
|