Wednesday, September 12, 2012

A dying pronoun?

An headline in the Kansas City Star (you mean you don't read the Kansas City newspapers?) caught my eye: "Hallmark drives another nail in dying pronoun's coffin." The author, James A. Fussell, writes that the Hallmark Channel is promoting the premiere of an original movie entitled, "I Married Who?" Fussell states that Hallmark (headquartered there in Kansas City) knows that the title should be "I Married Whom?" but they just don't care. Fussell continues:

"Oh sure, it was important to Ernest Hemingway when he wrote “For Whom the Bell Tolls” more than 70 years ago. We still teach “whom” in high school and use it as a salutation in letters to unknown recipients. And we might drop an “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” misquote of a John Donne poem into casual conversation. But, you know, whom really cares, right?"
There's a lot more in the article about this disappearing pronoun, but I've probably antagonized English teachers that are near and dear to me enough. So I leave you with this list:

RIGHT BUT WRONG
Many well-known songs and phrases use the incorrect “who,” but who could argue in favor of these grammar fixes?

  • Whom do you Love?” — Bo Diddley (and George Thorogood)
  • “Two, four, six, eight, whom do we appreciate?”
  • “Who Made Whom?” — AC/DC
  • “Who’s Zoomin’ Whom?” — Aretha Franklin
  • “Whom you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” — Chico Marx (impersonating Groucho in “Duck Soup”)
  • “Whom ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!” — Ray Parker Jr.
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