They vs Them in English Grammar
They and them are two words in the English language that are used with certain differences between them. ‘They’ is the plural form of the third person singular pronouns ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’.
‘Them’ on the other hand is the accusative case form of ‘they’. It is also used in the plural number. Look at these sentences.
1. He looked at them in the hospital
2. The elephant tramped them.
In the first sentence the word ‘them’ is used as a kind of personal pronoun with the association of an intransitive verb called ‘looked’. On the other hand in the second sentence the word ‘them’ is used as a kind of personal pronoun with the association of a transitive verb called ‘tramped’. This is the difference between the two sentences given above.
‘They’ on the other hand is used as a personal pronoun in the nominative case. Look at these sentences.
1. They went to the airport in a bus.
2. They ate their lunch in the hotel.
In the first sentence you can find that the word ‘they’ is used as personal pronoun in the nominative case with an intransitive verb called ‘went’. On the other hand in the second sentence, the word ‘they’ is used as a personal pronoun in the nominative case with the transitive verb called ‘ate’.
One of the primary differences between the two words ‘they’ and ‘them’ is that ‘they’ is used as a subject in a sentence whereas ‘them’ is used as an object in a sentence. This is because of the fact that nominative case deals with subject whereas accusative case deals with object.
‘They’ is a pronoun used to refer to all living beings including animals and birds. In the same way ‘them’ is a word that also can be used to refer to all kinds of living beings. ‘They’ and ‘Them’ are also used in the case of non-living things like books and any other object for that matter. Occasionally we used ‘these’ as a kind of substitution for ‘they’ when non-living things are referred to as in the sentence ‘These were bought by me last week’.