Good Reason

It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

Author: Daniel Midgley (page 5 of 126)

When do you really use ‘who’ and ‘whom’?

The Oatmeal has made a cartoon about when (and why) to use who and whom. This is not his first foray into grammar; he’s got a number of others. This one’s funny, and I like his examples.

Who/whom did you invite to this FABULOUS Slip ‘n’ Slide ‘n’ Mayonnaise party?

He also points out that we sometimes use the faintly archaic word whom if we want to be fancy. Couldn’t agree more. I’d say that’s a major reason for using whom these days.

But there’s something about this cartoon that’s a bit off, and I thought I’d comment.

Why do we have grammar?

Or rather, why do languages have grammar? A linguist sees grammar a little differently than most people. For a linguist, a grammar is a way of explaining how the parts of language fit together — how words get built up into sentences, and how the parts of words attach. A grammar is a description of the patterns that speakers use. People don’t use these patterns to be polite, or correct, or to maintain the social order. They do it because without arranging words into orderly patterns, too would to the be interpret sentences hard. Sorry! I meant that ‘the sentences would be too hard to interpret’.

And there’s a really interesting fact about the grammar of a language: it’s mostly unconscious to its users. Consider the way we use the 3rd person singular -s:

I eat.
You eat.
He eats.
She eats.
It eats.
We eat.
They eat.

You might not have thought about what that little -s is doing, and that’s my point: you don’t have to. Over and over again throughout your life, you’ve used it correctly without even thinking, never getting it wrong (except for slips of the tongue). That’s your internalised grammar of English at work.

Now to the cartoon.

In explaining who and whom, the Oatmeal has decided to start with an explanation of subject and object. This is kind of tricky for grammar n00bs, but he’s got some great examples, and if you’re fuzzy on the difference, you should check it out.

So the explanation goes: if your who (whoever it is) is the subject of its sentence, use who; if it’s the object, use whom.

The Oatmeal even gives a mnemonic:

If you can say that he does it, it’s who
He punched you. Who punched you?
If you can answer that question with him, use whom
You punched him. Whom did you punch?

Good in theory.

The problem is that in practice, English speakers use who instead of whom all the time. These are all okay:

Who did you give the present to?
Whom did you give the present to?
or perhaps To whom did you give the present?

though that last one is a bit grand for everyday conversation. And the Oatmeal says as much in the cartoon.

But here’s the thing: it works the other way, too. People use whom even when it’s the subject of the sentence. I took a look through a corpus — a body of language data. I used wordandphrase.info, which gives you lovely charts like this:

Click to enlarge.

This is part of the chart that you get when you search for whom, and you’ll see that whom appears in blue, right down the middle column for each sentence. You’ll also find that the words that appear nearby are coloured by part of speech (nouns, verbs, and so on). Here’s the funny part: if you hunt around through these sentences, you can actually find lots of examples where the writer has used whom, even though it’s the subject. Here are some:

yes , the economy goes up and down , but whom do you think is going to protect you the most ?

Who will protect you? He will (not him will), so by the Oatmeal rule, it’s a subject and it should be who. Nope, it’s in the corpus as whom.

mother ‘s harsh stares and accusations . He , a man whom I later found out had not one drop of blood running through

Who didn’t have one drop of blood running through something-or-other? He didn’t (not him didn’t), so it should be who, but again, here it’s whom.

patient probably had hostile wishes toward her older brother , whom she felt was always her mother ‘s favorite child .

Who did she feel was the favourite child? She felt he was, not him was, so it should be who, but it’s not.

And on and on.

Now you could say, well, these writers are getting it wrong. Maybe. And this is my point. Doesn’t the fact that native English speakers don’t obey the subject/object rule indicate that the who/whom distinction is not really a thing that English speakers are doing? Remember our -s example. No one has to sit down and make cartoons explaining that we say ‘I eat’ but ‘she eats’. It’s automatic. Who and whom isn’t.

The classic case of who/whom swapping is “Whom shall I say is calling?”

He is calling.
Him is calling. ???

Obviously he sounds better, so people should really say “Who shall I say is calling?” And yet if you look through Google Ngram Viewer, you can see that people have been conflating the two for the better part of a hundred years. The subject/object rule isn’t explaining the data.

So when should you use whom?

Let’s go back to the blue chart again. According to the data, there’s a really obvious indicator of whom. Look at the word just before whom, and see what colour it’s painted.

A lot of these words are in yellow, and that’s the colour they use for prepositions. There’s by whom, for whom, to whom, of whom, with whom, and even against whom. When you say that, doesn’t that just sound right? Kind of natural? That’s a sign to you that this is a real pattern in English that you’ve internalised.

So my rule would be: after a preposition, use whom. In other cases, use what sounds good. Using who is always okay, but you can use whom if you want to impress. The Oatmeal would surely approve.

Daniel font rundown: Artistic edition!

More people are using the Daniel font in a variety of creative endeavours.

Looks like I’m not the only one who uses my handwriting on cartoons. There’s also Bianca, who uses the Daniel font on her toons at Pushing Buttons. They’re funny!

Marianne has featured Daniel Bold on her site ‘apnea me‘, and boy, does it ever look tranquil. Watch out — you could float away, looking at this.

Artist Michelle Abernathy has used the font in a painting. She says:

About the piece: the title is Liquid-Gold, in acrylic on canvas. I am an advocate for physiological breastfeeding and this piece is all about how I felt nursing my oldest daughter and also about some of the amazing components in breastmilk. Now that she has a sister, I plan on doing a continuing piece to make a series.

Update: The series is done, and has been exhibited. Here are the artist’s comments.

Liquid-Gold II

Acrylic

A depiction of my 2nd daughter, my current nursling.  The largest words describe my own thoughts and feelings about our nursing relationship, which has been surprisingly different from the first. The middle-sized words describe her personality as a nursling, as well as obstacles we faced or events unique to her. The smallest words are some of the awesome properties that scientists currently, and even very recently, have found in breast milk.

Double Gold

Acrylic

This painting pictures a unique nursing relationship, one very much less common in the Western world. The tandem nursing relationship. It captures one of my favorite aspects: sisters learning to love and share. The largest words describe some of my thoughts and feelings about tandem nursing, which has been quite a mixed bag. The middle-sized words describe the benefits of tandem nursing. And the smallest words describe the benefits of nursing a toddler/young child.

The Liquid Gold Series

Acrylic

Congratulations, and well done!

And elsewhere in the visual arts, Vincent Steenhoek shows the Daniel font in a theatrical work, where the words are projected onto the stage. Vincent was the video designer, and Alex Tintore is the photographer. I love it. Watch how the layers of type converge to make a garbled, almost suffocating wall of text.

Wow — thanks to all you creative people. I’m glad to be a part of your scene.

If you’ve used the Daniel font somehow, send me a photo or scan — email’s up the top — and you might see yourself here. You can always download my fonts from the Page of Fontery.

A lifetime script

I have this memory of climbing into my parents’ bed (which I used to do all the time) and talking to my dad. I must have been about six. For some reason, I was curious about how-many-years-old I was, and what would happen at the various ages I’d be. For every integer I gave him, Dad told me what would happen. At eight, I’d get baptised.

What about twelve? At twelve, you get the Aaronic Priesthood.

What about 18? At 18, you can vote.
What about 19? At 19, you’ll go on your mission.

What about 25? At 25, you might get married. (Dad got married at 25, so he thought that was the right age for me.)

And so on. I always liked that talk with my Dad because it gave me the idea that life could have a structure. Not having one kind of worried me.

Recently, I was clicking around the tools in my E*TRADE account (I have Tesla stock, thank you) and found an unusual timeline for retirement planning. Well, not exactly unusual, but it describes a perfectly planned, sedate life. But it was unusual for me to see it in this formulation.

Here’s the graphic.

If that’s too small to see, it reads like this:

Where are you in life?
Age 20–29 (Starting Your Career)
Age 30–39 (Building a Family)
Age 40–49 (Climbing the Ladder)
Age 50–59 (Planning for Retirement)
Age 60+ (Living in Retirement)

A life in five easy pieces, carved into orderly ten-year chunks.

I want to say, oh how sterile. A cookie-cutter plan for a boring life.

But I don’t feel that way at all. In fact, I love seeing this plan. It’s the closest I’ve found to a sensible cultural script. Doesn’t the career-then-family idea seem more like what people actually do, and probably should do? I wish I’d seen this simple menu when I was young and starting out. It would have given me a template to work from, maybe to deviate from. But something. Some much-needed direction. And it wouldn’t have been the Mormon plan I got, which was really dumb:

Mormon Plan for Mormon Males
Age 19–29 (Mission, Marriage, and Work, all at once)
Age 29–death (Endless String of Callings, Endure ‘Til the End)

Whereas what really happened was this:

What Daniel Actually Did
Age 20–29 (Mission, Marriage, Kids, Uni — Bumping Around Clueless)
Age 30–35 (Actually Figure Out Who I Was and What the Hell Was Going On)
Age 36–40 (Reboot; Divest Self of Unwanted Baggage, Do Things Properly This Time)
Age 40–45 (Starting Your Career)

And from here on out, it’s:

Age 46–60 (You’re Much Too Old to Be Climbing Silly Ladders, Just Keep Being Awesome)
Age 60+ (Most Interesting Man in the World)

Okay, so I wasn’t very good at following plans. But I’m glad I threw off the terrible plan other people gave me, and chose my own. Even so, I’m keeping an eye on the E*TRADE plan, just as a reminder that the clock is ticking, and there are some jobs to be done along the way, regardless of where I am now, or where I’ve been.

Why apologetics don’t really help

With the Internet, more and more Mormons are bumping into the bits of LDS history that you used to have to dig for. As a result, the LDS Church is trying to — if not come clean about its history — explain its history in terms that will placate startled members. But how do you acknowledge the weirdness without freaking people out?

Here’s what can happen when a doubting Mormon goes to an apologist.

Issues all the way down

The LDS Church is in a flap over historical issues. People are leaving over historical issues! The typical one: Joseph Smith marrying other men’s wives and very young girls.

I never had a problem with historical issues; I left because it wasn’t true. For me, that was a historical issue. That Joseph Smith fabricated a vision with a non-existent god — that was a historical issue. Making up a book about non-existent Nephites and Lamanites — that was a historical issue.

And I’m not saying my epistemological apostasy is better than someone else’s historical apostasy. In fact, it might be worse — I was clearly unfazed by polyandry and other blatantly self-serving doctrines, until I started to question the existence of gods themselves. I must have thought a god that would command those things would be worth worshipping, which is just horrible. What was wrong with me?

So if historical issues was what got you out, great! Whatever works. But as far as I’m concerned, the official story is crazy enough.

Archbishop Tutu had better find a new religion.

Gee — Archbishop Desmond Tutu has risen a couple of points in my estimation. He’s come out as a supporter of equality for gay people, saying he wouldn’t worship a homophobic god.

“I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place,” the retired archbishop said.

“I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this,” he said, condemning the use of religious justification for anti-gay prejudice.

Now for the bad news. What Tutu doesn’t seem to realise is that, according to the Bible, the god he worships is in fact terribly and deeply homophobic, in both the Old Testament and the New.

The Skeptics’ Annotated Bible has a longer version.

You know what happens when I mention this to Christians? I tell them about the Old Testament, and they say, “That’s just the Old Testament.” Then I tell them about the New Testament, and they say, “That’s just Paul.” Motherfucker, it’s all just Paul. There’s not a lot they can’t accommodate if they want to — and I’m glad they want to! I’m glad Christians are ignoring the bullshit in their Bible — but when you’ve thrown Jehovah and Paul under the bus, what’s left?

So I’m glad Tutu feels strongly about this, and he’s in a position to do some good on this issue. But his stand is at variance with the Bible, no matter how he tries to spin it.

Many modern Christians are trying to give God a makeover. They point out that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. But this is misguided. Jesus would have been a 1st century rabbi. There’s no indication that he would have disagreed with the Torah, which (again) demands death for gay people.

Bottom line: If you’re Christian, you worship a homophobic god. By all means, be equality-minded. That’s just being a normal, good person. But if you try to claim a religious justification for your stand, you’re stretching it farther than the Bible will allow.

Here’s an idea for my equality-minded Christian friends: Since you’re getting your view from your own morality, and not the Bible, why not just skip the middleman in all other areas? Toss the Bible, and rely on your own good human morality, just like you do on loads of other issues.

Don’t call it religion.

It seems that religious people are fleeing the word ‘religion’.

Sociologists say we are increasingly divided over religion’s place in public life, but that when it comes to language, Americans are moving in one direction: toward a new vernacular.

We’re no longer “religious.” We’re “holy.” We’re “faithful.” We’re “spiritual.” We talk about what ”the Gospel compels us to do” or “gospel living.” Or “sabbatical living” and “God-oriented behavior.”

No wonder the word is poison. Religion’s characteristic blend of narrow-minded dogma, superstition, sexual busybodyism, and hypocrisy has rightly made it toxic, especially to younger people.

Polling shows that young Americans are considerably less apt to have religious affiliations than earlier generations were at the same age. They attend religious services less often and fewer of them say religion is important in their lives.

I think this thesaurus-trawling is merely cosmetic. Call Christianity a ‘personal relationship with Jesus’ if you want, it’s still a religion. As one interviewee says:

“The bottom line is: Christianity is a religion. You can’t get away from it,” he said. “If it walks like a duck, with doctrines, dogma, structures, everything a religion has, it’s a duck.”

The article’s pretty critical of religion, but one criticism goes untouched: Religion is a very poor way of reasoning and understanding the world. It relies on confirmation bias and evidence mining. It places preconceptions higher than facts. And this is true, not just of religion, but of all the other things that religious people are making lateral moves toward; supernaturalism, spirituality, god-oriented behaviour (how long before we hear GOB?), call it what you will.

Different name, same tactics. This ploy to alter the language of religion is a transparent semantic dodge.

Could anything convince you that a god exists?

Hemant Mehta the Friendly Atheist was asked a very interesting question. It’s in this video of him with a friendly Christian pastor.

The moment is at 24:15.

Pastor: Is there anything — anything — that might change your mind?

Mehta: I don’t think at this point anything that anyone tells me, because they usually tell me stories about how they came to God, how they came to Christ. It’s like, “Well, that’s nice for you. Unless I have that same experience myself, unless I experience a miracle that I can’t explain, unless something happens to me, I really don’t think I’m going to hear anything that will change my mind.

Pastor: That’s interesting, right? He’s saying if a miracle happens.

You can almost hear the pastor thinking:

This isn’t a great answer for me. Just because there’s something I can’t explain, that wouldn’t be enough for me. I can’t explain lots of things. I’m not good at that sometimes. And a lack of explanation doesn’t automatically mean “theism” — that’s the Argument from Ignorance.

If you’re an atheist, how would you answer this question? It wouldn’t be very open-minded of you if you said “no”, now, would it? You want to seem convincible. On the other hand, as Mehta points out in the video, you haven’t been convinced by the same 49 arguments that you’ve heard year-in, year-out, so what new thing are believers going to come up with?

It’s all a bit moot for me; even if I were convinced that the god of the Bible existed, I’d still never worship him because he’d be a homophobic, misogynistic dickbag.

But if it were that pastor asking me, I’d say “Sure. Something could convince me.” And here it is.

If:

  1. there were some occurrence, happenstance, or phenomenon for which the only explanation were a theistic one, and
  2. that explanation were well-studied, and
  3. this were well-accepted by the scientific community,

then, yes, I would probably believe it.

And this is never going to happen. Theists haven’t done the work of defining their god in a way that makes him testable. They have no interest in doing so. Like naturopaths and chiropractors, they have enough customers to keep going without doing all that work to establish real credibility.

Which really means, no, nothing as it stands could convince me. But that’s not my problem.

I did all this thinking, only to realise that I’m echoing something PZ Myers was writing about years ago. But that’s okay — if believers can come back with the same arguments time after time, then the answers will have to come back around, too.

I love your band. You’re doomed.

Hey, that was a great set! You guys are fantastic. Your sound reminds me a little of the Lilac Time. Oh, you haven’t heard of them? Right.

Look, I’ve got some bad news. I love your band! Yes, that’s usually a good thing, but you see, when I really get into a band, it means that your music appeals to bookish 40-somethings like me, and not to great numbers of young people who go to shows or buy a lot of recorded music. And that means that your appeal is probably going to be quite limited, no matter how good you are. You’re going to be critically adored, but criminally underrated. Sorry about that.

I don’t know what it is, but for some reason when I like bands, they never seem to do very well. Like this band on this t-shirt I’m wearing? Yeah, it’s too bad they were never able to break out before their guitarist quit. Great band though. You should check ’em out.

How much for one of your t-shirts? Never mind, I’ll check it out at the merch desk. Hey, thanks for the show, and keep going! I can guarantee you that whatever you release, a tiny group of middle-aged men will be ready to snap it up.

Talk the Talk: The Longest Word

For some reason, the other kids at my school thought you were smart if you could spell. And the ultra-hardest word was ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’. It was my ticket to fame, and all I had to do was spell one word.

My dad, for his part, once read somewhere that people with bigger vocabularies got paid more, and so encouraged me to learn lots of words so I’d make more money. A classic case of mistaking correlation and causation, I’m afraid. But it did start me building my empire of language podcasting and world domination, so maybe Dad was onto something there. Anyway, he thought the longest word was ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’. It’s either not the longest, or not a word, but what is? All will be answered in this week’s podcast.

There’s also something about the longest word in German, which Ben liked.

The offer stands: If you think you can pronounce any of the words in this podcast better than I can, make a video and post it!

One-off show: Here
Subscribe via iTunes: Here
Show notes: Here

Show tunes:

‘Schaufensterpuppen’ by Kraftwerk
from the album Trans-Europa Express

‘Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik’ by Outkast
from the album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

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