Who = Subject of the sentence. (Who are you?) Whose = Genitive or Possessive case (Whose are these?) Whom = Oblique case. This is the form which follows the prepositions to, from, with, at, and for.
Oblique is also known as objective case. It is the form of pronoun used as a direct or indirect object.
More of the same thing, really. You could say: who = subject e.g. 'Who took this?' (We don't know who did the action.) whose = possessive e.g. 'Whose coat is this?' (We don't know the owner of the coat.) whom = object e.g. 'Whom did you ask?' (We don't know the object of your question.)
this is more clearly seen as the object of the sentence, when the sentence is ordered more directly, as: 'You asked whom?' you = subject asked = verb/predicate whom = object
But who talks like that today? "You asked whom?" << nerd "Whom did you ask?" << also, big nerd. "Who did you ask?" << the cool kid.
It is a sad day when speaking or writing in an articulate manner is considered nerdy and uncool. Too bad the joke is on people who buy into empty popularity. Unless they want to sell books. Then they can just pretend to cool, using the income to fuel works that are actually fully employing a language. And thanks for the first few replies. I found them helpful. Another example of whom is: I gave Annabelle, to whom I had already handed a box of chocolates, two purple roses and wished her luck on her journey to Owls Head.
Lucas, well I mean that if the character in the novel is nerdy, or proper they should say words like whom, but if the character is hip, would they talk that way? I can't recall characters talking that way in modern novels unless the character is suppose to be proper or nerdy. See what I mean?
It is true that common diction has dispensed with the inflected form whom of the noninflected who. It is honestly part of the continued removal of inflection from the language which has replaced inflection with word order (isolating language as opposed to inflected language.) Since word order is fixed and rigid due to the loss of all other inflections, there really is no need, from a grammatical stance, to continue to inflect this pronoun. The fact that we do not inflect the pronoun in everyday speech, with absolutely no loss of meaning, is proof positive. But hey, that's just M.O.
