That and which replacing who/whom?

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Now you’re just rubbing salt in my wounds!!!

😰 😰 😰
 
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Languages change, that’s all we can say… 😮
 
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Thing is, Annie, we all have linguistic hates, or at least dislikes. Nothing wrong with that: if it weren’t true there would be no such thing as “style”. What’s unwise is to turn it into this sort of thing:
Annie said:
What is happening to who and whom? Is this some sort of weird ecological stunt to reduce humanity to the level of things now?
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Especially since that sort of thing so often turns into a belittling of the people who use the linguistic form we dislike (not accusing anyone here of that, but that’s what often happens out there in the world).
 
That’s a good point. I was just fooling around, sort of satirizing conspiracy theory people because my “proposal” seemed so unlikely, but in this day and age, anything can happen!
 
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Like others have said, grammatically not an issue. However, on too many CAF posts people misuse ‘you’re’ for ‘your’, ‘it’s’ for ‘its’ and ‘principle’ for ‘principal’. They should be flagged 😮
 
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What I have heard is that it is, believe it or not, a move incorporating more welcome to the ‘many’ genders.

Doctors, for example, instead of using he/she, up in my neck of the woods are now using ‘they’, and in the examples for who and whom, are also using that and which. I guess some people don’t want to identify even as persons. . .Even ‘person’ is disappearing in a lot of legal documents lately. Perhaps people were concerned about the ‘son’ the way Susan from the Parish Council disagreed with ‘men’ in Amen and replaced with AMEM. . .

It is a crazy world. . .
 
Don’t forget possessive wrongs such as "the Jone’s family, “The Miller’s”, and also the loss of the Oxford comma as other examples of how egregiously bad the average person’s grammar is these days.
 
I always check the spell checker. Also, I read my own posts and use the edit button when needed.
 
Funny thing, apparently the British are not big users of the Oxford (or series) comma. I was surprised to learn that!
 
Oh no, I used the word whom on my cover letter for a job application shouldn’t I have done that.
 
stpurl said:
Doctors, for example, instead of using he/she, up in my neck of the woods are now using ‘they
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I’m afraid the story here is the same. Singular they has been around for centuries. Even that brilliant stylist Jane Austen used it. It’s particularly useful when the sex of the referent is unknown, but it’s perfectly acceptable generally,

There’s a phenomenon known to linguists as the recency illusion. It’s common to think some usage one dislikes is newfangled.

Recency illusion - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
 
Annie said:
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Oxford Dictionaries
So that and which are the relative pronouns that we use to talk about things. The main difference between who and that or which is that you should only use who to refer to a person or people – who is never used to refer to things.

Conversely, is it OK to use which or that as a relative pronoun to refer to a person? In the past, which was often used in this way. … until the 19th century, it was part of normal English to use which as a relative pronoun to refer to a person or people, but nowadays it has an archaic or even incorrect feel. Contemporary grammarians advise explicitly against it …
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www.lexico.com

Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words

The world's leading online dictionary: English definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more. A trusted authority for 25+ years!
www.lexico.com www.lexico.com

For history see:
http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6362-lee.htm
 
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