English is so hard to learn that even native speakers argue over whether it's "who" or "whom"—and then just avoid the sentence altogether by saying, "That guy!"
It sometimes does, sometimes doesn't. "The shoes that/which I saw yesterday" is fine either way, but if it's a non-defining clause (i.e. the information is an extra, not essential) then we tend to only use which; "The shoes, which I saw yesterday, are..."
This is such a weird little easter egg in English. It's easy for me to grasp, because my first and second languages conjugate similarly to this, with suffixes. The rest of English doesn't though, so I get why especially natives might find it odd or unnecessary.
Having briefly looked it up, it is indeed claimed to be a non-native conjugation element.
I’m learning German (as a native English speaker) and recently found out that “whom” is one of the few instances where the dative case still exists in English. By and large though, English uses prepositions instead especially in informal speech.
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u/Admirable_Hunter_703 1d ago
English is so hard to learn that even native speakers argue over whether it's "who" or "whom"—and then just avoid the sentence altogether by saying, "That guy!"