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by surrealize 4811 days ago
Or "Who do you hang with"--"who" is the subject form, and "whom" is the object form; "who" is the subject of the quoted sentence as posted.

It's sad and ironic; using "who" in object position is a common mistake, and prescriptivists (grammar nazis) often correct it to "whom". But in this case, "who" would be right, but the poster has seen the correction so often that they've applied that "correction" even where it's wrong.

PS - thanks for posting first and giving me an excuse to talk about it :)

1 comments

If you're going to talk about it, you might as well get it right. Yes, "who" is the subject form and "whom" the object form, but "you" is clearly the subject in this sentence - "you hang"; subject-verb.

"Who do you hang with?" sounds more correct than "whom do you hang with?", but only because of that trailing preposition. Use "With whom do you hang" (as has been mention elsewhere) and we're all square.

But damn those Grammar Nazis anyway; that's not how people speak."Who do you hang with?" works perfectly well for me, gramatically incorrect or not.