# Who as Interrogative Pronoun



## bert_rent

Hi, 

I'm new at Russian. My question is pretty basic. 
I want to learn how to use the interrogative pronoun who, but there weren't enough sample sentences in WordReference for me to grasp the concept. They presented me with the following:
*кто, кого́, кому́, кем, о ком* pron. 

For the looks of it seems that this pronoun might take m., f. and nt. genders in the Accusative and in the Dative cases, do they? I found *С кем *in on of the examples so that must be the pronoun for the Prepositional case. What about the Instrumental? I'm at loss.

Thanks for your help


----------



## Ottilie

С кем  is  творительный (Instrumental case ) and  о ком is Prepositional


----------



## bert_rent

I am very new at this hahaha, so would you mind giving me some examples?

For instance:

*Who are you llooking at? or *
*Who do you see?*
*Who should I give the letter to?*
*With who is he supposed to play?*
I have no idea about the instumental or prepositiona, although with should be one of the two, I believe. Thanks for your help.


----------



## Ottilie

> I am very new at this hahaha, so would you mind giving me some examples?


Well,I wish you good luck with learning Russian.


На кого ты смотришь?
Что ты видишь?
Кому мне вручить/дать письмо?
С кем он должен играть?


----------



## bert_rent

Thank you very much for your help. Really appreciate it. So far, so good. After learning German and Japanese, everything else seems easy, although Russian doesn't seem to be a piece of cake. Hahaha


----------



## Ottilie

I have to state,that the Russian modal system with should must have to is a easier than the English one,therefore I cannot find a certain example for ''to be supposed to'' in this context other than должен ,but since my English skills are limited ,maybe other users can provide such examples



> although Russian doesn't seem to be a piece of cake. Hahaha


 Well,I believe Russian is a challenge(German too,by the way)so,if I hadn't  spoken Russian since the age of 5-6,I doubt I would have been able to learn it very fast. But if you managed to learn German,Russian shouldn't be extremely difficult by comparison


----------



## Natalisha

*Who are you looking at?* (на кого/что - Accusative)
*Who do you see?* (кого/что - Accusative)
*Who should I give the letter to?* (кому/чему - Dative)
*With who is he supposed to play?* (с кем/чем - Instrumental)



bert_rent said:


> For the looks of it seems that this pronoun might take m., f. and nt. genders in the Accusative and in the Dative cases, do they?


No, it doesn't depend on gender.



> I found *С кем *in on of the examples so that must be the pronoun for the Prepositional case. What about the Instrumental? I'm at loss.


The prepositional case answers the questions "о ком/ о чем?":
Who are they talking about? - _*О ком* они говорят?_


----------



## bert_rent

Thank you very much, Natalisha. Your explanation is very helpful.

Спасибо.


----------



## bert_rent

Natalisha said:


> *Who do you see?* (кого/что - Accusative)


 
Natalisha could you, please, clear a doubt for me?
Ottilie's translation of my 2nd example phrase was Что ты видишь? (*Who do you see?*) After considering what you wrote, I take that кого means who accusative, so shouldn't the translation of that sentence be:

Who do you see?:* кого ты видишь?* 

And if I understood you correctly, the sentence she gave me means:

Что ты видишь?:* What do you see?*

Thanks in advance


----------



## morzh

bert_rent said:


> Natalisha could you, please, clear a doubt for me?
> Ottilie's translation of my 2nd example phrase was Что ты видишь? (*Who do you see?*) After considering what you wrote, I take that кого means who accusative, so shouldn't the translation of that sentence be:
> 
> Who do you see?:* кого ты видишь?*
> 
> And if I understood you correctly, the sentence she gave me means:
> 
> Что ты видишь?:* What do you see?*
> 
> Thanks in advance




1. I think Otillie did not try to translate exactly what you wrote, otherwise she indeed would use "*Кого*".
2. BTW, it is not "*who* do you see" but "*whom* do you see". "*Who*" is always the subject, and "*whom*" - object.

*Who* is ALWAYS translated as "*кто*" and then "*whom*" is translated as any case of the "*кто": "кого, кому, кого, кем, ком*".

I understand that today actually most  Americans (don't know about Englishmen) will say "who" here it should be "whom", but then we want to know what translates how, and so the rule is: "who" is "кто" and "whom" is the cases of "кто" Listed above.

3. The cases are:

Nom. кто - что
Gen. кого - чего 
Dat. Кому - чему
Accus. Кого - что (notice this one single difference between "кто" and "что")
Instrum. "Кем - чем", and
Prepos. "О ком - о чём".


----------



## Ottilie

morzh said:


> 1. I think Otillie did not try to translate exactly what you wrote, otherwise he indeed would use "*Кого*".


 Sorry I haven't paid enough attention. 
  Кстати, я девушка


----------



## morzh

Ottilie said:


> Sorry I haven't paid enough attention.
> Кстати, я девушка




Oops, sorry, old male-chauvinist-pig mentality...can I ever be forgiven?


----------



## Ottilie

ничего подобного не имела в виду.
sorry for the off-topic


----------



## bert_rent

morzh said:


> I understand that today actually most Americans (don't know about Englishmen) will say "who" here it should be "whom", but then we want to know what translates how, and so the rule is: "who" is "кто" and "whom" is the cases of "кто" Listed above.


 

Hi, Guys. 
I was busy for a while, so I couldn't connect. Let me start be thanking Morzh for clearing up my doubt and for the detailed explanation. It helps a lot. About *Ottilie’s translation*, I didn't want to jump to conclusions because I noticed that neither English nor Russian were her mother tongue, so I left room for error. I also thought she could have misread the sentence, but I wanted to make sure about it, because it’s harder to unlearn something wrong, that it is to learn something the right way. Still, I appreciate her effort. I don’t know much about Slavic names, but her name looked like a woman’s name, is there a man’s name like hers? 
 
Morzh, since you took the time to comment on the interrogative pronouns who and whom, I must say to thing:
*1* Nowadays, nobody I know says whom in the USA, because here it sounds too stiff and even though I felt compelled to write whom, I felt funny about it, so I wrote who.
*2* In my opinion, “whom” applies to the Dative case and not to the Accusative, that’s another reason why I decided not to used. In German you have *wer* (nom.), *wen* (acc) and *wem* (dat). Wem is very much like whom, whereas who is like wer, but there’s no real equivalent to wen in English, but I do appreciate the explanation, though.
 
*Ottilie*: So, far Russian cases are very much like German cases except for the Prepositional and the Instrumental, but they also exist in German, but they handle them differently, though. The only thing that is kind of strange in Russian, but I don’t think I will have great difficulty handling is that in there’s no articles in Russian, and I’m used to article telling me the gender of the noun to handle the case. A nice thing about Russian is that the noun gender is very predictable whereas in German you got to memorize almost everything. That said, personally, learning Japanese was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. A word to the wise, try not to discourage beginners. You never know what they can do. Russian will be my 7th language, and my line of work is interpretation. I interpret in all six languages I know. 
 
Thank you for your help, guys.
Bert 
* *
* *


----------



## morzh

bert_rent said:


> *1* Nowadays, nobody I know says whom in the USA, ...



Agreed - this is what I wrote. Does not make it right. Half the people I worked with in Russia said "раболатория" and "ложить", and this does not make it right either. It just makes it "typical russian mistake", which means that if you said it this way, it will not give you out as a "foreigner". By the same token "who" as the object will not give you out as a foreigner, but heard by an English teacher will make her cringe.



bert_rent said:


> *2* In my opinion, “whom” applies to the Dative case and not to the Accusative,



Nope. Here are some rules of thumb.

*1. *Use the _he/him_ method to decide which word is correct. 	
	he = who 	
him = whom

Substitute one for another and the answer is clear.

Example: "who do you see?"
Substitution is:"I see *him*" - hence "*whom*" in the question.

2. Only personal pronouns (3-rd pers.) ending by "*m*" - "*him/them/whom*"  and "*her*" are used as objects; those that are not, (she/he/who/they) are subjects.

Here are few articles on teh subject ow "who/whom"

http://ask.yahoo.com/20021113.html

http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/whoVwhom.asp


http://web.ku.edu/~edit/whom.html

And, last-not-least - Wikipaedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_(pronoun)

-

I personally liked the rule #3 from these:

*Rule #1: Substitute “he/him” or “she/her”:* If it's either “he” or “she,” then it's “who;” if it's “him” or “her,” then it's “whom.”                                 *     Rule #2: **Every verb* *with a tense in a sentence must have a subject.* And that word is always in the nominative case, so it's “who.” For example: In this sentence, “I decided to vote for whoever called me first”:    
*If you apply those two rules *and you're still not sure, apply the all-important Rule #3.
*Rule #3: *Give it a sincere and honest effort to determine if it's “who” or “whom.” If it takes more than a 30 seconds to figure it out, pick the one that sounds best to the ear (read it aloud) and move on. Why? Because even grammarians are likely to squabble over which to use. But always — always — apply rules #1 and #2 before using Rule #3.


----------



## Ottilie

bert_rent said:


> I didn't want to jump to conclusions because I noticed that neither English nor Russian were her mother tongue, so I left room for error. I also thought she could have misread the sentence, but I wanted to make sure about it, because it’s harder to unlearn something wrong, that it is to learn something the right way. Still, I appreciate her effort. I don’t know much about Slavic names, but her name looked like a woman’s name, is there a man’s name like hers?



 Well,Russian is my mother-tongue(the 2nd),while English I can speak to a certain level(of course I have more to learn in this domain) . The thing is,that I didn't pay attention to the pronoun so I mistaken who for what,but ,for my mistake you have noticed Кого ты видишь and что ты видишь,same case,but the personal pronoun кто declines in Accusative,while что  doesn't .


----------



## bert_rent

Hi, Morzh.

What you write is right. Professionally I work as a judiciary and medical interpreter and translator, and I actually follow those rules when I translate. As you said an English teacher, and in my case at the University, an English professor would cringe when hearing who instead of whom, but also don’t forget that the majority forge the rules of a language. First people do something, then someone analysis it to understand what the majority does, then rules are created. I believe you know this, I’m just reminding you. 
 
Speaking to people informally, I never used whom because it sounds pompous to them and to me. If it comes from an English person it’s a whole different ball game. When I work in court, I must say that’s a horse of a different color. There I am expected to speak that way and so I do.
What I’m trying to say is that one has to be flexible enough to adjust to the situation at hand, but, yes, what you’re saying it’s scholastically right. I actually have no problem deciding what to use in English, now Russian... well, that’s a different story, LOL. I’m just learning it. That’s why I want to have a solid foundation from the start, so I don't have to unlearn anything. It’s been nice discussing with you and thanks for your help in Russian.


----------

