Trouble with recognizing who and whom!!!!?

Question

I saw the children who ( whom) were playing football.
I saw the children who(whom) were invited to the party.
The boy who(whom) was taken to the hospital is my friend.

which one ???who or whom? and why??? I CAN't recognize.please explain and give examples.

thnks alot

Answer 1

Each of these should be "who."

The reason these are so hard is because they are the only types of words in English that still have cases, and also because each one involves a subordinate clause.

"Who" is always the subject of a verb.
"Whom" is always the object of a verb.

Think of the following words are related:

Subject case: who, I, he/she, we, they
Object case: whom, me, him/her, us, them

So analyze the first sentence like this:

I saw the children. They were playing football.

To make the second sentence a subordinate clause, you must use "who," because "who" is the subject (not object) of the verb "were playing." The new sentence becomes, "I saw the children who were playing football."

It does not matter that "the children" is the object of the verb "I saw." What matters is that "the children" is the subject of the verb "were playing."

When you combine these two sentences, "the children who were playing football" becomes the object of the verb "I saw," but it does so as a unit. You would say, "I saw them." But you wouldn't say, "Them were playing football." The new verb, "were playing," has to have a subject. "They" (as in, "they were playing") always corresponds to "who," not "whom."

Similarly, the second sentence is:

I saw the children. They were invited to the party.

"They" is the subject of "were invited," and it does not matter that this is a passive voice. Again you get "I saw the children who were invited to the party."

As for the third:

The boy was taken to the hospital. The boy is my friend.

In both sentences, you would substitute "he" as the pronoun, rather than "him." So you use "who" rather than "whom": The boy who was taken to the hospital is my friend.

Let's change the second one to see the difference:

I saw the children. Sally invited the children to the party.

I saw the children whom Sally invited to the party.

Now "Sally" is the subject of the verb "invited" and "the children" is the object of the verb "invited." So "whom" is correct. To make it clearer, you could analyze these as follows:

I saw the children. Sally invited them to the party.

"Whom" corresponds to, or substitutes for, "them." "Whom" and "them" are both objects of the verb "invited," not subjects.

This is so much harder to explain than to sound out. By always associating "whom" with "me, him, her, us, and them," it becomes easier to hear which one is right.

Answer 2

It's a matter of case, nominative and objective. In all three, the correct word is "who."

The children played football, including the boy to whom I gave the football. (The preposition "to" requires objective case.)

Find a copy of "The Gregg Reference Manual," an excellent resource.