Wednesday Word: In defense of Whom

Now, I am not a grammar Nazi.  (in fact I'm not any sort of Nazi--unfortunate usage of that word, hmm?)  In fact I despise grammar as something overly confusing really not all that important especially since all the rules seem to change from year to year.  Yes, I'm talking to you, neutral possessive.  You deserve your apostrophe back.  (did anyone else grow up being told that its' was the proper way to express neutral possession?  Like a table's top.  Its' top.  I remember learning this b/c it was difficult to remember whether the apostrophe was supposed to come before or after the s.  Then I get to college and a professor reams me out for using the neutral possessive and tells me it never existed.  You lie professor.  You lie.)

I've always had a difficult relationship with grammar.  Even after majoring in English in college I still have untold difficulties when trying to differentiate between a colon or a semi-colon.  And if you ask me to name all the parts of speech I will glare at you.  Evilly. 

There are so many 'rules' of grammar that are falling by the wayside (and then getting picked back up when someone feels like it) that it seems silly to insist upon perfect grammar all the time.  That which was a heinous offense years ago, is in common usage now.  It all changes so quickly--how can we be expected to keep up? 

Before the real grammar Nazi's descend to remove my head, let me say that I understand why we have rules of grammar.  They are supposed to be an aid to communication--how can we understand each other if we make up all the rules as we go along, sort of like everyone is playing lingual Calvinball?  We'd all be walking around spouting gibberish and nothing would ever happen until someone had the revolutionary idea to standardize the meaning of certain words and the order they should come in so that people could communicate with each other.  Crazy, no?

All this is to say, I've got a bit of a love hate relationship with grammar.  Which is funny because I love words.  As you've probably realized.  I love the simplicity and complexity of them.  I love how one word can mean so much and have so many connotations that it can take a full paragraph to understand it.  Big words are an aid to communication, not a hindrance.  If there was a word that meant exactly what you wanted it to, subtext, regular text, over-text--why wouldn't you use it?  If there was no chance of it being misunderstood then wouldn't you use it?  The point of talking is to communicate a point to someone else.  Words are the medium by which we share our thoughts: shouldn't they be as precise as possible?

And now, after all that, we finally get to what you all have been waiting for.  (or at least some of you.  Maybe one of you?  Please?)

Whom!

I love this word.  I really really do.  In fact it's one of the only points on which I turn into a grammar Nazi.  If I hear someone saying 'to who did you send the letter?'  my blood starts pumping really fast, my muscles swell up, I turn a funny shade of green and--

oh.  Wrong story.

Mostly I just find myself uncontrollably shouting 'Whom!  To Whom!'

And since this mostly happens while I'm watching tv shows or movies, I don't think I'm really getting my point across.  Do you?

Whom is not that hard a word to use properly.  If the words 'to, for, from' are in front of 'who,' you can be assured it really should be 'whom.'  And sometimes whom can even start a sentence (thank you Saruman) such as 'whom do you serve?'  Which sounds boatloads more ominous than 'who do you serve?'  Whom has this lovely lingering effect because of the 'm' at the end. 

In fact, I think the reason I want to keep whom around is because it sounds cool.  Not because it's grammatically correct, but because whom just sounds so much cooler than who. 

We talk all the time.  Why shouldn't our words sound just as cool as the things we're using them to say?



And Happy Birthday to John Williams!  You have made the world a far more beautiful place than it was.  Thank you for existing.