This one comes by special request, and deals with the differences between the two personal pronouns, me and I, and where each should be used. The answer turns out to be simple if you remember a simple trick. Let's look at the problem:
We all understand the basic use of each word:I am incredibly handsome; she left me for a circus dwarf, or person of restricted growth if preferred. So far, so good.
Then, for some reason it all goes to pot when another person enters the scene.
Is it, "Jack and me went for a walk to the pub", "Me and Jack went for a walk to the pub" or "Jack and I went for a walk to the pub"?
The simple trick is to remove the other person from the sentence, thus:
"Me went for a walk to the pub" versus "I went for a walk to the pub".
Hopefully the right answer leaps off the page at you. If it doesn't then my work here will always be in vain.
There is a posh answer, in that I is always used with the subjective pronoun of a sentence, when the pronoun is the subject of a verb, and me is used with other objective pronouns, when the pronoun is the object of a preposition.
I vow that I will never get into that level of detail when a simple solution exists.
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Not that mine is perfect, but I must have had VERY GOOD TEACHERS as I was painfully and deliberately acquiring English as my second language...I would never have had the guts to put anything up as training but I find it hilarious and can only commend you, Paul.I feel like I have found a soul mate griping about the same thing. I hope you have given a tutorial on my pet hate: the misuse of the words to lay and to lie. My patients always tell me they were laying down...their life, perhaps? And working in Ashton-under - Lyne near Manchester one of my patients proceeded to tell me: "I were just eating me tea, when..."
Coming from South Africa I never thought that i would need an interpreter for English, but there I did!
ReplyWhen ever I hear the word "sat" on telly I shout the word "sitting!" My wife just sighs.
I'll try to do "me" and "I" tomorrow, along with the correction to "me and him went out".
1) It's not 'Lay Lady Lay', it's 'Lie Lady Lie';
2) It's not 'Lay Down, Sally', it's 'Lie Down, Sally'; and
3) It's not 'I Feel Good!', but 'I Feel Well'.
I may not have used the proper punctuation above, but this discussion is about grammar, right? :-)
