English grammar in conversation | Using 'who', 'whom' & 'whose' in questions & as relative pronouns

Do you sometimes get confused between 'who', 'whom', and 'whose'?

By the end of this lesson, any confusion you may have about these words,

whether as question words or relative pronouns, will have been cleared up!

So, let's take this sentence for example:

Kate phoned Steve.

If we want to ask a question

where the answer is 'Kate', that is the subject of the sentence, we use the question word 'who':

Who phoned Steve?

Okay! Let's now look at the question word 'whom'.

Same sentence: Kate phoned Steve.

But now, this time, we want to ask a question where the answer is 'Steve', and 'Steve' is the direct object of this sentence.

So, you would imagine that we need a different question word. You're right!

The question word, grammatically speaking, is 'whom':

Whom did Kate phone?

And the answer is 'Steve'.

But, this word 'whom' is becoming very very rare in English. It's disappearing!

Now, even when we are asking a question about the object of the sentence, we just use 'who'.

So, the better question to ask is simply:

Who did Kate phone?

So, what if 'Steve' is the indirect object of the sentence? For example, if the sentence is:

Kate bought a phone for Steve.

And the answer to the question we want to ask is 'for Steve'.

Do we now use 'whom'?

Do we say: For whom did Kate buy a phone?

The sentence is perfectly grammatically correct, but it's extremely rare to use this formulation.

Again, we want to swap 'whom' for 'who'.

But, what happens here is that we cannot keep the preposition and say:

For who did Kate buy a phone?

We take the preposition and put it at the end.

So, the question becomes:

Who did Kate buy a phone for?

The only situation where we keep 'whom' is when we ask a short question:

For whom?

So, when the preposition is right next to the question word.

Okay! And the final question word is 'whose',

which is always used for possession.

Let's say that Kate found Steve's phone,

the phone that belongs to Steve.

The question word here to use is 'whose':

Whose phone did Kate find?

Steve's phone.

Okay! That's all for question words.

Now, let's look at the same words 'who', 'whom', and 'whose' as relative pronouns.

Just a reminder that a relative pronoun creates a clause that tells us who we're talking about.

For example, if we hear the sentence: The man spoke.

We're not quite sure which man we're talking about. So, we need to identify this man,

and we can create this clause, which is for example: The man who was sitting behind me.

And because the man here is the subject, we use the word 'who'.

Now, this clause is called an 'essential' or 'defining' relative clause.

I know that sounds complicated.

But, all it means is that it's essential to understand this sentence.

You can't remove it.

Because if you remove it, we come back to the 'Which man?' question.

But, we also have something called a  'non-essential' or 'non-defining' relative clause.

This type of clause gives more information about  the person in the sentence, but you can drop it,

and the sentence is still complete.

For example:

My brother, who was sitting behind me, spoke.

You can drop that and simply say:

My brother spoke. We still know who we're talking about.

I hope you noticed that with a non-essential relative clause, the clause comes between two commas.

That means we can drop it.

With an essential relative clause, there are no commas.

So, let's now look at the relative pronoun 'whom'.

Remember our original sentence: Kate phoned Steve.

Remember that 'Steve' is the direct object, and if you want to talk about Steve,

I suppose we want to use a different word  'whom': Steve is the person whom Kate phoned.  

But again, exactly as we had with the questions,  this word 'whom' is also disappearing as a relative pronoun.

So, the most common way of saying this is using 'who' again:

Steve is the person who Kate phoned.

Now, what if 'Steve' is the indirect object? Let's look at that sentence:

Kate bought a phone for Steve.

Steve is in the indirect object. So, let's use 'whom':

Steve is the person for whom Kate bought a phone.

That would be the strictly grammatically correct sentence.

But once again, just like with the questions, extremely uncommon.

 So, we need to do the same thing.

We need to swap 'whom' for 'who' but remove the preposition and put it at the end.

So, the sentence becomes:

Steve is the person who Kate bought a phone for.

Okay! And finally, the relative pronoun 'whose'.

Let's say that Steve lost his phone and we want to mention this:

Steve was the person whose phone was lost.

One very interesting point about 'whose'  is that you can also use it for a relation between two objects,

a possessive relation between two objects.

For example, let's say that the screen of this phone was cracked.

If I want to combine these two ideas with this relative pronoun, I would say:

It was the phone whose screen was cracked.

Okay! That's all for 'who', 'whom', and 'whose' as relative pronouns.

And I'd like to end by answering one question that I often get.

And that question is:

Can we use 'that' as a relative pronoun for people?

The answer is:

Yes, but only instead of 'who'. You cannot use it instead of 'whose'.

So, we can say:

Kate is the person who/that bought a phone for Steve.

And we can also say:

Steve is the person who/that Kate bought a phone for.

Okay! That brings us to the end of this lesson.

If you want more information about relative pronouns and relative clauses, you can watch this lesson.

Thank you for watching, and I'll see you soon in my next lesson.

Bye for now.