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2018-03-18, 01:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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"I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
Ok, so a lot of you are probably aware that there are a bunch of alleged grammarical rules out there as to whether to use "I" or "me" in a sentence (especially if it's and-someone-else), that often don't in any way reflect the way the English language is actually spoken. What I want to know is if these rules are derived in some way from Latin because I know that a lot of the wackier inaccurate "grammarical rules" (such as not splitting infinitives) were derived from Latin back in the days when people were still in awe of the Roman Empire and you could still truthfully describe the Roman Empire as having been impressive and mighty without having to add a comma and the word "considering". And if it isn't from Latin where the hell did it come from?
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2018-03-18, 03:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
I don't know what rule are you talking about, can you give me example?
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2018-03-18, 03:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
like "Jenny and me joined the chess club" would be considered wrong. It should supposedly be "Jenny and I" despite the fact that that isn't how people talk.
Or "Jill took Justin and I to the shop" is wrong. It should be "Justin and me", even though that actually sounds slightly less right."If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins
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2018-03-18, 03:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
This Editor and a couple of other sites that I came up when I searched for "I vs me object or subject of the sentence," implies that it's an issue native to English, just due to how English defines the two as subject pronouns and object pronouns.
E: Latin's all greek to me, though, so maybe someone else more fluent can clarify if Latin has that distinction as well. Or any other language, for that matter.Last edited by OracleofWuffing; 2018-03-18 at 03:46 AM.
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2018-03-18, 03:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
It's really just 1 rule, not a bunch, and it isn't that wacky: it's just a subject/object distinction, which AFAIK is pretty common.
"I" is used when you're referring to yourself as a doing something: "I ran down the street," or "I jumped the fence." "I" is a subject pronoun.
"Me" is used otherwise: "Pass me the ball," or "They sent me an email." In those cases the person "Me" is referring to is not doing the verb. "Me" is an object pronoun.
like "Jenny and me joined the chess club" would be considered wrong. It should supposedly be "Jenny and I" despite the fact that that isn't how people talk.
Or "Jill took Justin and I to the shop" is wrong. It should be "Justin and me", even though that actually sounds slightly less right.
In the latter example, "Jill" is the one doing the verb, so Jill is the subject. "Justin and I" aren't doing anything, and thus "Justin and me" would be correct instead.
EDITED: For clarity
EDITED AGAIN
Unfortunately, Subject-Object distinction is also a phrase used in philosophy, so searching for a linguistic history is muddied.Last edited by crayzz; 2018-03-18 at 03:54 AM.
Originally Posted by crayzzOriginally Posted by jere7my
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2018-03-18, 05:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
It lines up with how a lot of people talk just fine, and as stated above is just a standard matter of subject and object distinction. The same thing applies to other paired pronouns (they/them, he/him, she/her), with I/me standing out mostly for not holding as firmly in certain regional dialects, much like who/whom.
What's also interesting is that if used on their own I/me tends to conform more to "proper" usage. "Jenny and me joined the chess club" can see actual use, "Me joined the chess club" is an improper second language usage that almost never shows up with native speakers. "Jill took Justin and I to the shop" just sounds wrong to me, with the error tending to go in the other direction, but it at least seems more likely than "Jill took I to the shop". To some extent the very specific form of "[X] and me" almost exists as an idiomatic expression in and of itself that obeys some weird rules.
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2018-03-18, 07:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
And ye/you thou/thee, where only the original third person accusative,dative&genative survives.
(eta the wikipedia for Ye (the pronoun, not (th)e does have a table.)Last edited by jayem; 2018-03-18 at 07:31 AM.
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2018-03-18, 08:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
Firstly, it's spelled "grammatical".
Secondly, this particular rule is less stupid than others, and is something you're far more likely to get called out on when writing than when talking. Here's the simple trick: if you're using a sentence and say something like "Jake and {me/I}", figure out whether 'me' or 'I' would've sounded right if Jake wasn't in the picture.
"Jake and {me/I} went to the park."
"Mom got ice cream for Jake and {me/I}."
Like, I said, it's not complicated.
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2018-03-18, 09:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
Latin was influential when it came to the King James, that's for sure, but a lot of English stuff actually comes from French, directly or as a calque (like using you instead of thou).
The "you and me" thing used as subject isn't an English exclusive. Italian has the same structure, although inverted (io e te), and I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out that it's the same in other languages. But Latin doesn't: "ego et tu" not only requires that ego comes before tu, but also that they are both nominative (subject case), assuming that they are subject.
Very old example (Plautus, III-II century BC):
TR. Philolaches. PHILOL. Quid est? TR. <Et> ego et tu — PHILOL. Quid
et ego et tu? TR. Periimus.
PHILOL. Quid ita? TR. Pater adest. PHILOL. Quid ego ex te audio? 365
TR. Absumpti sumus.
Tr:
TRANIO: Philocales!
PHILOCALES: What's up?
TRANIO: You and me--
PHILOCALES: You and me, what?
TRANIO: You and me, we're dead!
PHILOCALES: But... why?!
TRANIO: You father's coming!
PHILOCALES: What... what did you just tell me?
TRANIO: We're ******.
Notice that Latin and Italian don't use subject pronouns unless there is a big reason, unlike English. So Latin would only have used "ego et tu" to e.g. imply a comparison or highlight differences between the two persons and the actions they would undertake, or to put it clear, like here, that the problem's there for both.Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2018-03-18, 09:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
It came from a long time ago, when people spoke proper. Now it's all "Americanisms" and jargon, and English is changing. There was a time when one refered to oneself as "one", but now it's all me.
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2018-03-19, 10:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
It comes from Old English, Latin, and pretty much every language English derives from.
In most languages, all nouns have different forms depending on how they are used. Latin has six, Russian has six, Greek has five, etc.
In English, they are mostly the same, and the only distinction for nouns is the possessive (horse / horse's).
But pronouns still have distinctions between the subjective, objective, and possessive (I/me/my).
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2018-03-19, 10:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
The "rule" is less of a "as it should be because I say it" and more of something to do with cases in a sentence, and sentence structure/organization.
'I' is a subjective pronoun, meaning that is the case you use for the subject in a sentence. "I worked all day"; "I was playing the fool"; "Actually, I don't". It's easy to use subjective pronouns in English and to recognize it, because they tend to be located at the beginning of a sentence, barring all clauses that usually come before the subject because of style (like adverbs).
'Me' on the other hand, is an objective pronoun, meaning that its function is to be the "recipient" of an action or the verb in question. Hence, sentences like "She ran towards me"; "He tried to fool me" don't make sense if you replace for the subjective case. Have in mind that in reality, subjective/objective cases aren't at all interchangeable because they refer to different functions within a sentence.
So, when you say "You and I, we love each other"; it is both 'you' and 'I' who are the subject of the sentence, because together they form 'we'. But when you say "It was you and me, my friend"; those 'you' and 'me' are objects in that sentence, because the subject is in reality performed by the impersonal pronoun 'it'. You don't say "It was we"; rather, the natural/proper form would be "It was us".
Bear in mind that there is a difference between "langue" and "parole"* and people don't usually take in mind correct usage of words in a sentence (in relation to what is being communicated, not in relation to only rules) and mistakes in the use of language are common to all languages across the world. It doesn't help that the most common pronoun in speech (you) is both phonetically and written the same; so people usually fall in the error of thinking they are using one case when in reality it's the other way around.
*Linguistics terminology. English uses "language" for both terms, but the difference would be "language in an abstract" (langue) and "language in its use" (parole).
ETA: Sure, we can discuss whether "langue" comes first or "parole" does. But the differentiation has more to do with proper analysis of language than with the argument between Language Determinism vs. Prescriptivism. In the case OP presented, people are just using language wrong, because they are meaning something different from what they actually say (those who use 'me' as a subjective pronoun, that is). It's not about the rules, but about what the word actually meansLast edited by Lord Joeltion; 2018-03-19 at 10:55 AM.
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2018-03-19, 11:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
About "you and I, we are family": I am not so sure that "you and I" are the subject. I mean, "we" is the subject. I am not sure of what "you and I" is: apposition? It's an explanation of who "we" is, and not the subject in its own right, although it is dependent on the subject. So you can write "We are family, you and I", which I don't think would be possible if "you and I" were the subject.
Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2018-03-19, 12:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
Unlike rules such as the prohibition on split infinitives, this is an old one dating to Proto-Indo-European. Indo-European languages are, by and large, inflection-heavy and have a set of different forms (or cases) for nouns depending on grammatical function, in addition to a much larger set of different forms for verbs according to a series of factors such as person, number, tense, and mood. English has become much less inflected and much more analytic over time, replacing many endings native to Old English with auxiliary verbs and similar constructions (that is, we say "I go" and "I will go," adding another word for the future tense, rather than a bound morpheme, like Latin "io" and "ibo"). Distinctions like I/me are relics of this older system of inflections.
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2018-03-19, 12:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
True, it's not the "real" subject*; but it is still a clause that is directly dependent on the actual subject in the sentence. In that case, the clause and the pronoun are interchangeable, so they accomplish/convey the same message; so their syntactical functions are comparable.
Take for instance, "The President of the United Playgrounds, Mr. Richard Burlew..." you can say one is the clause and the other is the actual subject, depending on the way you parse the sentence. You can interchange them, nevertheless; for it's the same to say "Mr. Richard Burlew, President of the United Playgrounds....". Whatever you decide, one is the subject, and the other is just a clarification of who he actually is.
*I'm taking the word "subject" as if you meant the nucleus of the subject (usually a noun clause or PP), and not the "complete" subject in a sentence; otherwise, I'd point you out that the "subject" in a sentence is by definition "everything that is not part the predicate"**. Depending on how you were taught parsing (or what theory your teacher has taught you), you may have a different approach on how to analyze structures and therefore, what comprises both predicate/subject.
**Again, one of the broadest definitions, but that's the most useful, given that in the absence of a predicate, there is no subject in the first place.
ETA: And anyway, the precedence of "we" before "you and I" has more to do with hierarchy; while in the other example, it's just about style. They still perform the same function (even if one example is interchangeable and the other isn't) and IMHO should be analyzed in a similar way.
That is... and odd way to phrase it. I'd rather say "you" and "it" are 'new forms'* that are shoving a trend that blurs the division between grammar cases; not that all the other pronouns are "relics". Whatever English trends you take into account, inflections of pronouns are still a majority in English; and except for exceptional cases (who vs whom); they are still practical to have. I would say that, for I perspective, it's neat that I have different pronouns to express I thinking and I ideas.
*Not actuallyLast edited by Lord Joeltion; 2018-03-19 at 12:28 PM.
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2018-03-19, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
That "You and I" almost acts as the topic in a topic-comment sentence. That's a feature of Japanese grammar, but I haven't seen it used to describe English.
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2018-03-19, 09:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
That's the shorthand I was taught in high school; simply remove everyone else who's with you from the sentence, and go with what is then obviously correct. "Me joined the chess club" is clearly wrong, so it's "Jenny and I joined the chess club," not "Jenny and me." Quick and dirty way of virtually always doing it right.
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ETA: I say this nearly every time the topic comes up, but I try to always split infinitives.Last edited by Peelee; 2018-03-19 at 09:54 PM.
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2018-03-20, 05:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
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2018-03-20, 08:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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2018-03-20, 09:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
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My English non très bueno, da? CALL: 0800-BADGRINGO
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2018-03-21, 05:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
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2018-03-21, 05:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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2018-03-21, 05:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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2018-03-21, 06:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
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2018-03-21, 11:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2018-03-21, 02:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
I mean this mostly facetiously, but as one of the people who you apparently don't regard as "people," you should be careful where you spout your linguistic bigotry.
Here's something useful you learn in even the most basic book on linguistics: Humans have an instinct for learning language, and this instinct includes an innate desire to figure out and follow the rules of a language. That's why everyone has a sense of what "sounds right," even if that doesn't always match how others feel. We aren't formally taught grammar when we're young and learn to talk--instead, we instinctively try to infer the rules based on how people around us talk. Thus, what "sounds" right to us will generally reflect a unspoken consensus of how people around us all talk.
The formal rules of grammar we learn in school are essentially a best effort to understand and to articulate that consensus as reached by a particular group of English speakers (and perhaps more importantly, writers) during a period in time when distant groups of people couldn't regularly speak to each other regularly and there wasn't anything close to a universal consensus among all English speakers, even among more "formal" documents (such as the two or three major published English dictionaries).
Or "Jill took Justin and I to the shop" is wrong. It should be "Justin and me", even though that actually sounds slightly less right.
So how you want to speak is really up to you. In general, since we live in a far more connected world where every English speaker has to some extent the ability to participate in a massive linguistic group, we're probably moving steadily towards a single, close to universal consensus on English grammar. That consensus probably won't precisely follow any formal rules, but there will probably be a strong bias favoring either the formal rules of Standard American English or Standard British English, for two reasons. First, every native English speaker will most likely learn formal grammar from one of those systems in school. Even if your family speaks a local dialect, the English you learn in school will be the one thing you have in common with kids who grew up in an urban black neighborhood, Appalachia, Louisiana, or working class Boston. Two, for all the kids who grew up not speaking English, chances are the only English they'll learn at first is one of the standard dialects. If you're a kid in Egypt or China learning English from an American or British teacher, he's probably going to teach you the rules for standard American or British English, which will probably be what the published books and materials will be geared towards as well. He's not going to teach you Cockney or American English as spoken in the South side of Chicago.
So, if you want to communicate clearly, and to be taken seriously, particularly in more professional or formal settings, it probably helps to conform. However, speaking a less common, regional native dialect is also a good way to express your distinct identity and your connection with your local culture. In that sense, neither set of rules is wrong, it's simply a matter of what you're trying to accomplish and how you want to be perceived.
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2018-03-21, 02:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
Well, as the overwhelming majority of middle-aged men will tell you "If it wasn't invented when I was young/Didn't exist when I was in my prime" (NSFW language), "it's not proper/important".
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2018-03-21, 02:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
Shouldn't it be "weren't?"
If you want to be a language-hipster like Razade, you could make the argument that a lot of things are "archaic, needless dribble," in terms of both how long ago these rules often originated and redundancy of communicating information. Latin has something like a half-dozen declensions for nouns. English basically has one, with the very narrow exception of a few pronouns that come in two forms. In terms of communicating, English has been doing decently enough using location within a sentence to indicate how the noun is being used. (That and, of course, using "of" or " 's" instead of the genitive form.) For example, if I say "Alice shanked Bob," we all know that Alice did the shanking because she comes before the verb, and Bob got the shanking because he came after. Thus, it would be redundant for me to have to say, "Alice-a [nominative form] shanked Bob-o [predicate form]" because I'm not actually communicating new information.
On the other hand, redundancy also gives you greater freedom, freedom that can be used to enhance communication or expression. For example, in my hypothetical language, you know who did the stabbing based on the verb form. Thus, if I say "Bob-a shanked Alice-o" it means Bob shanked Alice, which we can tell based on noun form. However, if I say, "Bob-a Alice-o shanked," it also means Bob did the shanking, because we care only about the noun form, and not the sentence arrangement. Think of what this means in terms of artistic expression. If you're a composer or a poet, and you want to match a certain meter or beat, you have the option of rearranging the sentence without changing the meaning. If you're telling a joke or a dramatic story, you can change the sentence in order to decide what piece of information comes last.
I can't think of a situation where the distinction between "who" and "whom" can be exploited in that way, and obviously Razade can't either, but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't be done, or that it hasn't been done.
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2018-03-21, 02:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
Well, as another of those people that Bohandas doesn't regard as people, "who" being used instead of "whom" sounds wrong to me, so by that (somehow?) overriding requirement for language, I now declare that everyone else needs to use "whom" properly, even if I can't poem.
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2018-03-21, 03:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: "I" vs. "me", where did this 'rule' come from?
Somehow I never developed the inherent sense of wrongness for "who" and "whom," the way I have for "and I" and "and me," so it takes deliberate effort on my part. I wonder if it's because I almost never hear "whom" (or for that matter, sentences that should have "whom" but have "who" instead) in spoken conversation.