Who vs whom

I'm a peaceable qwerty queen with a preference for giggling rather than quarreling. A relaxed kinda writer with a 1950s English girls' school education, although I'm now a long-ago presidentially welcomed, hand-on-my-heart pledger-of-allegiance, standing up anthem-singing, voting American citizen with an ear for slang. That is until I'm reading a Middle Ages tale about a group of English pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem & one of 'em ups & says "About whom are you talking?"

Then I get disgruntled. What kinda folks in Jolly Olde talked that way? Where on earth today, does anyone utter or think in terms of who & whom? Who's the writer trying to impress? "See, Teach, I remembered!"

Mini-pomposity
Whom, an Old English pronoun, is the objective form of who, used when who is not the subject of its own clause, as in: "She can't remember whom she saw." Usage: Formerly considered correct whenever the objective form of who was required although now it's no longer thought a faux pas so the objective form who is commonly used, even in formal writing: "There were several people there who he had met before."

Who cannot be used directly after a preposition & the preposition is usually displaced, as in "The man (who) he sold his car to."* In formal writing it would be: "The man to whom he sold his car." There are certain sentence in which who is considered awkward: "The refugees, many of whom were old & ill, were allowed across the border."

All thanks to www.thefreedictionary.com.

* They say it's not proper to end a sentence with a preposition. Only professors & inferior-complexed others would bother to regurgitate this taboo cuz when you're composing dialogue between everyday peeps, they'll not be reformatting their thoughts to sound like proper dorks. I dare you to tell me one person you've talked with or listened to who sweats this stuff?

My all time hero, whose Laying In State at Westminster Hall I went to just before I emigrated, had this to say about that: "The rule which forbids ending a sentence with a preposition is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put." Sir Winston Churchill. 1874-1965 - British Orator, Author & Prime Minister.