Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
What do you think?

Should "whom" be phased out of the english language?
I am sure you can explain how the rules work, but language is not what is codified in some gramatical rules but what people actually speak with each other. And it's not even an issue of non-native speakers, even a big number of native speakers appear to never use it at all.

But what do native english speakers think? Is it something you even notice when people don't use whom when it should be used, and it something that makes anyone who does do it appear to speak bad english?
I've looked up one site that has a couple of examples, and intuitively I think I would have used "which" instead of "whom" in most places. Or is that even worse than who?
I'm a prescriptivist, so I'd rather "whom" stayed. I do notice when it's missed, although misuse of it is so common that it doesn't annoy me as much as some errors. "Which" would, I'd say, relate to objects rather than persons. You could get away with it, but I'd argue that "who" is less objectionable, even if wrong.

I've never been much of a fan of the descriptivist position that "if enough people get it wrong, it becomes right". I can understand the logic behind it, but in today's digital age where people are communicating more and more in a context-free environment with no body language or tone of voice, I think precision of language is more important than ever. There's the odd word which is now pretty much useless (see "moot"; "literally" is going the same way) because it's been used erroneously for so long to mean its antonym that it now has no value as a concept since you have to explain what meaning you're assigning to it. I don't think that's a good thing.
Or are you among those who could care less?
I was going to ask if you did that on purpose until I saw the whitetext