Put It in Your Own Words

I believe that you cannot truly understand something until you can put it into your own words. If all you know is the standard definition of something, it could be completely useless. If you understand what the definition means, it will be more useful, but you may not understand why it works. In order to explain something in your own words, you need to know how and why it works.

For example let's take the word 'whom' and when to use it instead of 'who'. The standard definition is that 'whom' takes the place of the object of a sentence. That's great. I understand exactly what that means. But do you? Not many people know or remember the vocabulary of English linguistics.

When teachers explain how to use 'whom', they usually say that you use it when it happens after the verb. That's a pretty good explanation, except that it isn't always the case. In the sentence, "To whom are you speaking?", 'whom' comes before the verb. Of course, that's because it is a mangled version of "You are speaking to whom?", in which case it does come after the verb.

In a sentence, the subject does the action and an object receives the action. That definition is also confusing, since some verbs do not seem receivable. In the sentence "I drive cars", it is hard to think of cars as receiving driving. Cars drive. If anything, we receive the driving that cars do. So let me put it in my own words. The subject does the action. The object isn't doing the action. In "I drive cars", everybody can see that I am driving. And since I am the subject, 'cars' must be the object.

As such, you use 'whom' instead of 'who' when it takes the place of a noun that isn't doing the action.

I admit that this definition isn't tight or clean. Then again, if you wanted a tight, clean definition, you should stick with the standard one. Its succinct efficiency is why it is the standard. The one great quality of my definition is that I know what it means, how it works, and why. And I am better because of it.