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German still has a dative case. We lost our dative case in England around the time Middle English developed.
by einhverfr 13y ago
German still has a dative case. We lost our dative case in England around the time Middle English developed.
- raverbashing 13y agoYeah, but Whom is used in the indirect object case, as in "To whom does this belong"
- einhverfr 13y agoIndirect object is similar to dative, sort of. Seriously, most people would say "Who does this belong to?" We can argue whether it is good style or not, but descriptively it is standard grammar.
- thesz 13y agoGoogling "to whom it may concern" returns ~2050000 results, "to who it may concern" returns four time as less results (~479000). You are not right.
- lutusp 13y ago> Googling "to whom it may concern" returns ~2050000 results, "to who it may concern" returns four time as less results (~479000). "Four times as less" -> "four times fewer" or "one-fourth" ??
- einhverfr 13y ago"To whom it may concern" is formulaic though, just like "Dear Mr. President." Those are words used as they are, verbatem, in a specific context. They are thus ossified and preserved in a much more conservative state than the rest of the language. It is not unreasonable to suppose that even as our language changes, that phrase will continue to remain intact in root and morphology even if the morphology disappears elsewhere.