ShmoopTube

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Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Hong Kong Noodle Company.

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Which went out of business when King Kong Noodle Co. squished it flat.

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How would you correct this underlined segment from the passage, if at all?

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owning?

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And here are the potential answers...

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The second part of the sentence is a modifier for "a Chinese-American named David (Tsung) Jung."

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(No relation to Carl Jung, we’re guessing...but crazier things have happened.)

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It’s this modifier’s job to describe Jung by telling us that he owned

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the Hong Kong Noodle Company in L.A.

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Currently, however, the modifier just isn’t getting the job done.

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Choice (A) suggests the word “owning,”

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but this makes it sound like Jung currently owns the Company.

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The passage makes it clear that fortune cookies were invented a long time ago, so we highly

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doubt Jung is still on the planet. Hopefully, he’s still making fortune cookies in that

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big noodle company in the sky.

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If context weren’t enough to cut this option, the verb “invented” also makes it clear

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that we should speak of Jung in the past tense. Choice (A) is officially nixed.

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Option (D).

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(D) gives us the phrase “being the owner of.”

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This has the same present tense connotations as (A), so we’re sure it’s wrong.

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It’s also too wordy, which Jung would hate if the succinct messages in fortune cookies

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are an indication of his literary taste.

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We’ve narrowed our options down to (B) and (C).

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Both are in the past tense, so they’ve got that going for them.

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However, they’re having a disagreement over the use of the pronouns “who” and “whom.”

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A lot of people get mixed up with this, but it’s pretty simple when broken down.

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The trick is knowing that “who” is in the subjective case and “whom” is in the object.

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Subjective? Objective? Whaaa? No worries; it’s simple.

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The subject of a clause is the person, place, or thing that’s doing something, while the

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object is the person, place, or thing having something done to it.

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Take this sentence for example: “Zoe loves her pet chinchilla.”

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Zoe is the one doing the loving, so she’s the subject.

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Her pet chinchilla, on the other hand, is the one receiving the love, making it the object.

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(We’re not sure if the chinchilla loves Zoe, but it’s probably none of our business.)

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OK, let’s zoom back to the Hong Kong Noodle Company and figure out this who/whom thing.

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Both of these pronouns are trying to stand in for Jung, right?

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We’ll sub in Jung’s name and read the clause out loud to help us determine if the

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blank requires the subjective or objective case.

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“Jung owned the Hong Kong Noodle Company in Los Angeles.”

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Here, Jung is the subject because he’s the one owning something, while the Hong Kong

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Noodle Company is the object because it’s the thing being owned.

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Since Jung is the subject, the pronoun that stands in for him has to be in the subjective case.

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Thus, we declare choice (B) the correct answer

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because the sentence requires the subjective pronoun “who.”

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We also need to stop binge watching Dr. Who,

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but that’s a personal struggle we’ll deal with on our own.

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