Whom?

This use of “whom” is correct. Why does it sound wrong?

Good old Dagwood. From Sept 2013

The reason is because word order is important in English. The rules of word order aren’t absolute in English, but we pretty strongly like to have the subject come right before the verb. Since we don’t use many inflections, word order steps in to tell us the function of a word. Lots of times we spell nouns and verbs exactly alike. Without word order, we can’t tell. Take “run,” for instance. is it a noun or a verb? Depends.

This dog run looks pretty clean.

Would you run to the store for me?

In front of the verb, “run” is a noun, a place for dogs to hang out. After the subject, it’s a verb, something you do.

Highly inflected languages, such as Greek, care less about word order. In fact in Greek, they have a figure of speech called “chiasmus,” which means to arrange the words in a symmetrical order by part of speech. For example: adjective, noun, adverb, verb, adverb, noun, adjective. You use the inflections to tell what goes with what. It’s pretty hard (though not utterly impossible) to do this in English.

So on to the Dagwood cartoon. “Whom” is in front of the verb “talking.” That makes it feel wrong, even though it’s right. Actually, the “to” is out of place. Literally the sentence is “Do you realize to whom you are talking?” Of course, that’s even stiffer than the original.

Ah English. Sometimes you just can’t win.