Question

"Who is there?" or "Whom is there?" I hear people use both, which is more correct? Can we interchange both words as we like?

Answer 1

Hint: Who and whom both are pronouns. Pronouns are the words that are used in place of nouns and noun phrases. When we write about a noun in a paragraph then, we do not keep repeating the name of that noun again and again. Instead, we use a pronoun in its place.

Complete answer:
Who is both a relative as well as an interrogative pronoun? Whom is a relative pronoun? Relative pronouns are the pronouns that mention a previously used noun in the sentence. They join two clauses, a subject clause and an adjective clause. For e.g. She is a woman. She bought a cute dog. If we combine these two sentences with the use of relative pronouns then it will be as follows;
She is the woman who bought a cute dog.

“Who is there?” is the correct answer. It is so because firstly, who is an interrogative pronoun therefore it is required in an interrogative sentence. Secondly, if we can replace a noun in the answer with ‘he’ or ‘she’ then we have to use ‘who’, while if we can replace a noun in the sentence with ‘him’ or ‘her’ then we have to use ‘whom’.

Answering the question ‘who is there?’ will give the answer as ‘He/she is there.’ which is grammatically correct.

Answering the question ‘whom is there?’ will give the answer as ‘Him/her is there.’ which is grammatically incorrect.

Note: Whom is mainly used to refer to the object of a verb or a preposition in a sentence. While, who is used to refer to the subject of the sentence i.e. people and sometimes pet animals.