who/whom again

[marie]

Consider these two sentences:

a) The people who I work with are Italian.

b) The people with whom I work are Italian.

Which sentence is correct? And what is the subject and what is the object?

Thanks.

[Alan Palmer]

You'd find b) shown as correct grammatically but a) is more idiomatic.

[Alan Palmer]

Sorry - forget about your subject/object question.

"People" is the subject of both sentences. The verb in both sentences ("are") doesn't take an object.

[Little Jack Horner]

I hesitate to argue with Alan but, surely, "people" is the object? Why else is "whom" correct grammatically? A rephrasing of the sentence would be: I work with people who are Italian. This remove any doubt, I think. Or should it be "I work with people whom are Italian"? Either way, I think no-one would criticise either in spoken English nor, I suspect, in written English. Few people/persons would know which is correct.

[marie]

Thanks Alan,

a) The people who I live with are Spanish.

b) The people with whom I live are Spanish.

By extension, the above two follow the same reasoning, a) is idiomatic and b) is more correct grammatically.

Can "people" be both subject and object? What is "I" is the sentence?

Thanks

[Twoddle]

I agree with Alan. "People" is the subject of the sentence, "The people ... are Italian", and "whom" - the object case - is correct because it follows the preposition "with", but it's not the subject or object of either of the verbs.

"I" is the subject of the verb, "work".

As Alan says, a) is idiomatic and likely to be heard in speech, but b) is grammatically correct.

[Alan Palmer]

What Twod said.