<p>The council consisted of Portuguese sailors, most of THEM KNEW little or nothing of the language spoken by the native people.</p>
<p>(THEM KNEW) IS SUPPOSED TO BE (WHOM KNEW). WHY?</p>
<p>o yea whats the he/him trick again ? thanks</p>
<p>If you kept the original sentence, it would have turned into a run-on. Was this a spot-the-error or sentence revision?</p>
<p>He/him trick? All I know is the: They took me and (he/him) to jail -> They took him to jail, not they took he to jail, so “him” is correct.</p>
<p>Not 100% sure , but from what i know the subject closest to the pronoun(?) takes preference. So since sailors is the closest and that is whom the sentence is talking about the answer is most of WHOM KNEW… since its refering the sailors, Sorry if it makes no sense haha.</p>
<p>The sentence is talking about each of the sailors individually, so the correct term is whom knew.</p>
<p>-------------------------------------------If it is to be, it is up to me…</p>
<p>Common case of informal English. In formal/standard English, it goes as following, for example:
You would say in an everyday conversation on the phone: “Who am I talking to?” This is incorrect. The correct structure should be “To whom am I talking?”</p>
<p>Though I’m still not sure, thanks anyway guys.</p>
<p>anybody else?</p>
<p>Whom usually follows a preposition.</p>
<p>The council consisted of Portuguese sailors. Most of them knew little or nothing of the language spoken by the native people. * This can be broken down into 2 full sentences. Therefore, the original is a run-on. </p>
<p>In order to correct the run-on problem who/whom needs to be used. “Whom” fits where “them/him/her/etc.” seems to work, and “who” is used where “he/she/they/etc.” seems to work. Because the sentence is most correct (it is still a run-on) as: *</p>
<p>The council consisted of Portuguese sailors, most of THEM knew little or nothing of the language spoken by the native people.</p>
<p>Rather than:</p>
<p>The council consisted of Portuguese sailors, most of THEY knew little or nothing of the language spoken by the native people.</p>
<p>*“Whom” should be used, making the correct answer: *</p>
<p>The council consisted of Portuguese sailors, most of WHOM KNEW little or nothing of the language spoken by the native people.</p>
<p>whom is the object of the preposition (preposition is “of”). (He gave it to me, not to I) Who is a subjective form.</p>
<p>This sentence could get very confusing OR wordy OR both and could easily become run-on, as previously mentioned. One way it could be written is:
good: The council consisted of Portuguese sailors. Most of the council members knew little or nothing of the language spoken by the native speakers.</p>
<p>better: The council consisted of Portuguese sailors. Most of them knew little or nothing of the language spoken by the native speakers.</p>
<p>better: The council consisted of Portuguese sailors; most of them knew little or nothing of the language spoken by the native speakers.</p>
<p>best: The council consisted of Portuguese sailors, most of whom knew little or nothing of the language spoken by the native speakers.</p>