Question on the sentense "Whom should I say is calling?"

[elaineyi]

Whom should I say is calling? The preceding sentence is an example of:

a. Hypercorrection
b. Correct Standard English
c. Overly formal English
d. British English as opposed to American and Canadian English
e. Commonly used informal English

[SweetMommaSue]

Hello elaineyi!

Hang in there--I'm going to research it now. I'll be back in a bit with an answer for you.

Smiles,
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[mykwyner]

I've never really thought about this one much, but my feeling is that the pronoun who is the subject of the predicate is calling and therefore, should not be in the objective case. So, I say it's either (a) or (d). I'm a teacher of American English and not qualified to judge if it should be (d).

[SweetMommaSue]

The answer is a. Hypercorrection.

Hypercorrections are when you say something grammatically incorrect, but are trying to sound correct. . . like "between you and I" instead of "between you and me".
A test for "who or whom" is to change the order of the sentence to check for subject/verb agreement which will also show if the noun referred to is an object noun or subject noun. . .

Changing the word order of the sentence gives us:
"I should say who is calling?"

This makes whom grammatically incorrect. Who is calling? He or she is calling. It is a subject, not an object. Who is a subject, whom is the objective case.

I hope this helps!

Smiles,
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[AlainK]

Excellent!
(the moderators can of course delete this post, but this is really the kind of stuff I love. Encore!)

[Tdol]

I've never really thought about this one much, but my feeling is that the pronoun who is the subject of the predicate is calling and therefore, should not be in the objective case. So, I say it's either (a) or (d). I'm a teacher of American English and not qualified to judge if it should be (d).

I'm British and it's not D)- *between you and I,* I'd call it hypercorrection.

[elaineyi]

thanks for the clarification guys! I really apprecaited it. I would think its 'a' also. ^^