Whom am I speaking with? | Hacker News Reader

Whom am I speaking with?

olark.com

43 pointssteiza48 comments

The winner is: With whom am I speaking?

You wouldn't say, "The car am I driving in?". And you should avoid dangling prepositions. If your sentence (or clause) ends in a preposition, it is either extraneous, or your sentence requires rewording.

From the Internet somewhere:

On his first day at Harvard, a young freshman from Georgia was exploring the campus and, in his southern drawl, asked an older student: “Can you please tell me where the library is at?” The student looked down his nose and and said, in his New England accent, “At Harvard, we don’t end our sentences in a proposition.” The freshman replied. “Pardon me. Can you please tell me where the library is at, jackass?”

Quoting (possibly [1]) the great Winston Churchill, “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”

[1] http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/churchill.html

Of course, it should be "... shall not put."

But you might say "Which car am I driving in?"

I think the majority of Americans would say "Which car am I driving in?" However, something makes me think the majority of Britons might actually say "In which car am I driving?" Am I the only one thinking this?

You probably aren't the only one thinking it, but it isn't true. Sentence-ending prepositions of this form are quite common throughout the English-speaking world.

The older and more educated the Brit, the more likely that is. I would sometimes say that, but the majority of Britons today would say "wot car are we drivin', eh lads?", or ask in Urdu.

"wot car are we drivin', eh lads?"

This makes me smile :)

Personally, I find 'dangling prepositions' fine in spoken English, because intonation can overcome their awkwardness. I try to avoid writing dangling prepositions, and I find reading them to be slightly jarring.

If you're pretending that English is a Romance language, that's a valid concern.

Alternately, just go with "Who am I talking to?"

That doesn't solve anything - "to" is still a preposition and the "Who" in your sentence should still be "Whom".

1) Again, the preposition isn't a problem.

2) Then use "whom" if you like. I really can't be bothered to care, as the purpose of language is communication, not structural pedantry. Remember your Elements of Style - "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous" - and note how even presumably well-educated people here find "whom" awkward and stilted in that usage.

I'm not taking a position either way - just stating that your suggestion doesn't actually change anything in question.

And you should avoid dangling prepositions.

You should avoid dangling prepositions if you are speaking in Latin. Then again if you are speaking Latin, ALL dangling prepositions will intuitively sound so wrong that you'll never make them.

If you are speaking English, they are perfectly fine. Some people a long time ago decided Latin was the bee's knees and English grammar ought to mimic Latin grammar. This is nonsense.

But you can keep up the nonsense as a way to show off your education (superior social rank).

Terminal prepositions are poor Latin, but they are perfectly acceptable English. The prejudice against terminal prepositions (and split infinitives, as well as such abominations as the s in island) came from a period in English linguistics where a bunch of grammarians thought that English wasn't dignified enough, and tried to pretend that it was a Romance language by shoehorning the language into awkward and ungainly shapes that faintly resemble Latin. The language of Shakespeare is dignified enough for me, without the groundless prescriptivist contortions. He, like many authors since then, has found that the natural aesthetic flow of English will sometimes (not always) result in the preposition most naturally falling at the end of a clause. When that situation arises, take the opportunity to celebrate the uniqueness of your native tongue.

Valid points, noted. I did mention that you should avoid the closing preposition, and you are right to acknowledge that there are cases where it is acceptable. However, I think it is safe to assert that most of the time, it is simply imprecise speech.

If "With whom am I speaking?" sounds snooty, then I guess I am a snob.

That was very eloquent, thanks for sharing.

I watched a series of college lectures on the history of language a couple of years ago, and that was one of the main points the lecturer made. Growing up in a traditional school system, I had never really thought about it that way.

Having said that, there is also a "high" and "low" version of most languages. The "high" version is full of obtuse rules and associated behaviors, while the "low" version is more catch-as-catch can.

So yes, you are correct: enjoy the art of your native tongue! I love screwing around with the rules. But also be aware that the culture you are in may prescribe all sorts of silly little rules, and knowing these -- and when to apply them -- can drastically affect other people's perception of your character. Whether we like that fact or not.

One of the things I wish I had more time for is the study of languages and the philosophy of languages. It has direct application in everything from AI to talking to Dolphins to programming projects. Really cool stuff.

Right. And just to drive the nail in a bit deeper: ending a sentence with a preposition is a grammatical construction that English gets from its roots as a Germanic language. German has what are called "separable verbs" where prepositions are combined with verb roots to create a new verb. In certain cases, the preposition prefix is split off of the verb and placed at the end of the sentence. The preposition must come at the end of the sentence in order to be grammatical. You can see remnants of separable verbs in English:

"I passed the man in the red hat by." pass-by

"I threw all of my old, useless papers out." throw-out

To repeat the parent's point: the stricture against ending a sentence with a preposition is simply a bias for grammatical structures that English inherited from Latin (through French) and against structures inherited from German.

The rule against splitting infinitives falls into the same category. It is not possible to split an infinitive in Latin because infinitives aren't made up to two words.

Again, these two rules (and others like them) are about biases, not about grammatical correctness or even clarity of communication. When you say "Who am I speaking with?" and "To boldly go where no man has gone before.", no one is actually left scratching their heads and thinking "I wonder what he means?"

I would never say either of those sentences.

"I passed by the man in the red hat."

"I threw out all of my old, useless papers."

Both of those not only keep the preposition away from the end of the sentence and keep it near the verb to which it belongs, but most importantly they sound more natural.

Your example of "Who am I speaking with?" follows this same pattern -- "with" is kept next to the verb "speaking".

I love the smell of prescriptive grammar in the morning.

Bull. There is no credible linguist that will argue that sentence-ending prepositions are either invalid or even uncommon in English, whether spoken or written. There are some who prescribe this rule, due to nothing more than their personal aesthetic, and vilify those who violate it; but it is not a rule that competent speakers or writers of the language follow, and indeed those that propagate the so-called "rule" are typically unable to follow it consistently.

Furthermore, "the car am I driving in" is a complete red herring in this discussion; its syntactic structure is not parallel to that of the title of the post.

(My apologies to everyone else for feeding the trolls, but I can't stand to see prescriptions like this passed around as if legitimate.)

As long as we're indulging in English pedantry,

> There is no credible linguist that will argue...

who will argue ;)

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/churchill.html

Okay, grammatical quibbles aside, this blog post is scary.

Harvesting that much information about your customers is creepy and dangerous. I don't care that it helps your business or that it's technically feasible, it's just wrong.

I'd like to understand more of your concerns.

Olark just help website owners take the information they already have about you (and that you gave to them), and use it to provide better service.

So if your logged into a website and ask a question the operator doesn't have to ask you for your username again (the website already knows it -- why shouldn't the person helping you)

Most of this parallels what goes on in the real world. If you often shop at the same store the clerks will start to recognize you and give you more personal service -- Olark just lets small business owners do the same online.

Definitely, that's why Olark has been firmly sitting on my AdBlock blacklist from the first time I ran into them.

Do you also block Google Analytics?

Yes.

You can block them and many, many more with Ghostery. I've installed it on all of my computers/browsers.

http://www.ghostery.com/

  > Ghostery, a service of Evidon, Inc. All rights reserved.
  > http://www.evidon.com, formerly Better Advertising.

Thanks, I appreciate the irony, but No

Doesn't bother me. Is this paranoia or something? I mean, who better to know how to block advertising beacons than a former advertiser?

I am puzzled at why this comment is so popular.

You have a website. With a login form. People gave you information about themselves. They are contacting you from your website which they are logged in to.

Exactly what is creepy and dangerous about having the information that they gave you knowing that it would be stored in your system be presented to you when they use your service to contact you??? Guess what, odds are that they are going to do something like ask about the status of an order that they made, and you're going to pull up the account and have information about that as well! If you can't, then you're incompetent and can't provide good customer support.

Really, I understand privacy as much as, and probably more than, the next guy. (I'm one of the rare people who cares enough about mine to have avoided Facebook.) But really, this is bog normal for what happens when you contact customer support at any competent place. Any place that doesn't have the ability to get at information like this is going to have customer support so bad that you won't want to go back.

That's pretty neat -- sounds really useful for trying to better address a customer.

I can't decide if the "Whom" in the title is a troll or not. At least the article gets it right.

How does the article get it right? If the answer can be "him", the question should be "whom", and if the answer can be "he", the question should be "who". Having said that, "Whom am I speaking with?" does sound pretty weird, "With whom am I speaking?" sounds much better.

Who is a subjective pronoun. Whom is an objective pronoun.

First hit off the Google: http://web.ku.edu/~edit/whom.html

Doesn't matter really, just made my brain twitch when I read it.

Me too, but that's because the implied preposition makes the word order look funny. The subject of the title sentence is "I".

That was the traditional rule, but in modern English, "whom" is a particularly marked usage anywhere except as the immediate object of a pronoun. "With whom am I speaking?" sounds formal but fine; "Who am I speaking with?" (or "...to?") is also fine. The form given in the title here is at best overly formal and stilted. What makes it weird is that it mixes the formal not-after-a-preposition "whom" with a sentence-ending "with", mixing register in a very confusing way.

It's like wearing a bow tie and tails with loud bermuda shorts: both are perfectly acceptable public attire and you might see either on a busy urban street of an evening, but it's jarring to see them together.

Right. "With whom am I speaking"? sounds stuffy at the beach. "Who am I speaking with?" sounds lazy at the opera. "Whom am I speaking with?" just sounds confused.

A similar example that annoys me is the American pronunciation of the wine Pinot Noir ("PEE-no NWAR"). I say make up your mind. It is either "PEE-no NWA" as in French, or "PEE-not NWAR". The mixed pronunciation just sounds confused. Plus, it goes great with peanuts.

> "PEE-no NWA" as in French

Unless the French language has changed since I lived there, Noir would be pronounced NWARhh, with a gutteral R.

Ok, there is some kind of faint R in the French, but it definitely doesn't ryhme with "see no star".

English: http://inogolo.com/pronunciation/Pinot%20Noir French: http://www.forvo.com/word/pinot_noir/#fr

The reason it "sounds weird" is that it's attempting to straddle two dialects. The use of "whom" is a signal for classical (Latinate) grammar, which would demand the Latinate prepositional word order, while the use of separable-prefix Germanic word order with "with" at the end is a signal to use "who" because dangling prepositions are associated with the less-Latinate trend towards discarding accusative "whom".

These modes normally don't get mixed, hence the weird sound of the title of this post.

I can't decide if this comment is a troll or not. "Whom" is grammatically correct.

I think it sounds odd because it's disconnected from its preposition. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever heard a sentence starting with "whom."

"Whom shall I fear?"

"To whom brother"

It wasn't a troll, but you're correct. The word order apparently caused my brain to spasm.

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