A Clear Difference Between “We” and “Us”
“We” is the nominative form, “Us” is the objective. We’re supposed to use “we” as a subject, and “us” as an object. This guy gets it wrong, even though the wrong way is pretty common. First speech in the second panel. The sentence contains an ellipsis (left some words out), which confuses the structure.
The full construction, without the ellipsis, would be “That woman needed it more than we needed it.” Use “us,” and you’re saying “she needed it more than she needed us.” Heh, of course that might be true, too.
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This Could be Tricky
Third panel, last word.
Should that be “him” or “he”? It depends on what he means.
- “As much as him” means they love reading as much as they love him. (That’s the objective case, correct for a direct object.)
- “As much as he” would mean they love reading as much as he does. (Nominative case, subject of loves.)
- I can see wolves loving to eat him, but I don’t think that’s what the sheep would hope for.
Who, Maybe Whom
“Who” appears in all three panels. Are they correct?
Ready for the answers?
Panel 1: correct. “who” is the subject of the clause, which is nominative, so “who.”
Panel 2: incorrect! The object of a preposition (“to”) should be in the objective case, so “whom.”
Panel 3: correct. “who” is a predicate nominative (after “that is”), so “who.”
So how did you do?
PS—I found another example of a wrong “whom.” Second panel. The “whomever” is the subject of the sentence, so it should be “whoever”:
Correct Use of Case
Two of the cases we use in English are nominative, used for subjects of sentences and clauses; and objective, (a combination of accusative and dative used in other languages). We use the objective case for direct and indirect objects. This comic is rather low-brow, but I approve of the title.
“Who” is nominative. It’s the subject of the sentence. “Whom” is objective; its the direct object.
Another Who-Whom Lesson
Maybe it’s a subordinate clause lesson, because that’s the key here.
From the June 2021 Scientific American, page 62:
In Lisbon, Portugal, the social centers Disgraça and RDA69,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/index.cfm/_api/render/file/?method=inline&fileID=5F31A1C3-AF1A-4CF0-A00D504B5F075088 (probably a paywall)
which strive to re-create community life in an otherwise highly
fragmented urban situation, reached out with free or cheap food
to whoever needed it.
Last line. Shouldn’t that be “to whomever…”? After all, “to” is a preposition, so we should use the objective case, right? Nope.
Here’s the rule:
- Go from the inside to the outside.
What’s inside the prepositional phrase? A noun clause! And “who” (well, “whoever”) is the subject of “needed,” so it gets the nominative case!
So there you have it. Sometimes you can say “to who.”
