密歇根新闻广播 英语中who和whom的使用该如何区分

 

When to use "who" and when to use "whom" is one of those grammar conundrums¹ that just won't die.

Once you learn the rule, it's not too hard to distinguish between the two.

"Who" is the subject that does an action, while "whom"is the object that receives an action. For example, "who" speaks to "whom."

Pretty simple, right?

Unfortunately, learning the rule doesn't mean you'll escape tricky² cases.

A listener recently emailed us and asked which to use in this sentence:

"We have chosen the candidate (who or whom) we believe can meet our needs."

It's easy to go with "whom" in this instance. "We believe" seems to be pointing right at "whom", making it the object.

But that's wrong. In this case "who" is the correct pronoun.

Ignore "we believe" for a moment. You're left with, "We have chosen the candidate who can meet our needs."

In this case, "who" functions as the subject of the relative clause, "who can meet our needs."

You can test whether you've made the right choice by trying the sentence with he/him or she/her:

"We have chosen the candidate. He can meet our needs."

Since "him" clearly would not work in this case, we know we made the correct choice with "who."

Of course, sometimes there are places where usage guides tell us which is right, but it still just sounds wrong.

Grammar guru Anne Curzan ran into one of those instances while she was responding to an email recently.

"I was typing out the email, and I wrote, ‘I wasn't sure who to send this email to.' As I was typing, I was thinking about how I know that should've been ‘whom' but ‘whom' sounded terrible there," Curzan said.

Agreed.

1 conundrums   

n.谜，猜不透的难题，难答的问题( conundrum的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• After all the conundrums of Hungary, the second Turkish Grand Prix promises much. 继匈牙利站所有猜不透的事之后，第二届土耳其大奖赛许诺了太多。 来自互联网
• I see conundrums, dilemmas, quandaries, impasses, gnarly thickets of fateful possibility with no obvious way out. 眼看问题经纬万端，进退两难、入困境，死路一条，盘根错节的命定可能性，但找不到明显的出路。 来自互联网

2 tricky   

adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的

参考例句：

• I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手，你能帮我吗？
• He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题，只做了个笼统的表述。