The différence between : Who , Whose , Whome

Démarré par Amokrane, 21 Mar 2008 14:56

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Amokrane

Hello i wanna know , what's the difference between : who , whose and whome ( especially between whose and whome !)

Thank you very much :)

Thomas

#1
Hm...well, here are the basics:

"whose" has two different, but similar uses: asking a question and indicating posession/relationship. To ask a question, you see something like "Whose car is this?" which means that you do not know the name of the car's owner. The second, posession/part of something, you might see "This is the mother whose daughter was in my class", indicating that it is the mother's daughter. If you translate these, you will see a pattern: "De qui est cette voiture?" and "C'est la mère dont la fille était dans ma classe". Understanding that the word dont has the word de as part of it, kinda in reverse, "c'est la fille de cette mère était dans ma classe", you see the similarity between the two.

who/whom -- this is the same word (qui), but in two different forms, just like "je/moi". Grammatically, "who" must be a subject and "whom" must be an object, so for example you see..."who is it?" (qui est-ce?) or "with whom were you talking?" (avec qui est-ce que tu parlais?). Just remember, if it is the object of a preposition (for, around, to, with, under, beside, etc...) or a verb, you use whom, but if it is the subject, it's who.

Now, another important point: the word "whom" is, at least in America, not used very often, and when it is used, it is often incorrect. This is a correct setence...

"With whom did you go to the movies?"

but you would almost always hear: "Who did you go to the movies with?"

The second one is grammatically incorrect, but it is the common way to speak. Unless you are writing a formal report or giving a formal speech, I would not worry about using whom, to be honest. For example, the other day I was watching some American news, and the newscaster said at one point...

"...information about whomever bought the car" -- but this is NOT correct! (it's a bit difficult to explain, but if you break the sentence down grammatically, you see that "whomever" is the subject of the clause "whomever bought the car" so it SHOULD be "whoever bought the car"). Very, very often, the word "whom" is misused because even Americans do not understand the use of this word. And I would like to point out: this was on the news! This was not a random person from the street, this was a professional newscaster who speaks to thousands and thousands of people on television.

Is that clear? If not, let me know!
Hello, and welcome to Apprendre l'anglais.
Bonjour, et bienvenue à Apprendre l'anglais.

Amokrane

all right , now  it is very clear thank you :)

Flo