# Grammar question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 4, 2014, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311 "2014-04-04T02:49:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/21 "2014-04-04T14:04:54Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I looked up “it is i” and “it is me” in google’s [ngram viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=it+is+i%2C+it+is+me&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cit%20is%20i%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cit%20is%20me%3B%2Cc0) > > It is I was pretty clearly more popular throughout the 1700s and into the 1800s but by 1850, they had reached a point of equilibrium and it is me began to overtake and in the 1960s it is I pretty much went and died. I imagine when the Jackdaw of Rheims was written which I believe was around the 1830s-40s, they were reacting pretty strongly to the perceived encroachment of an ungrammaticality. Very interesting! I was worried that this might just be hypercorrect bias\*, but I checked Old English (to my very limited ability) and it seems to bear you out, meaning that the ngram probably does map when the shift happened. \*because these are published, edited works ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/22 "2014-04-04T15:07:06Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > No, the King and I are in that picture, i.e., we are in that picture. It would be wrong to say, “The King and me are …” or “Us are …”. While i agree with what you are saying here, you misrepresent what I wrote. I didn’t tack on anything to the answer “The King and me”. So if someone says “who is in that picture?”, a complete sentence would be “the king and me.” Correct? Because if it was just me in that picture, the answer would be “me” not “i” > [@njtt](#): > > If the King and I are in the picture, it is a picture of the King and me. Which pronoun is correct depends on what role (if any) is being played by the phrase within a sentence. > > As others have already said, neither phrase is a sentence (and thus neither grammatical or ungrammatical by itself) but if it is put into a sentence functioning as the subject, it should be “The King and I”, and if it is functioning as an object (direct or indirect) it should be “The King and me”. > [@bob\_2](#): > > “The King and I are in that picture.” > “Who?” > “The King and me.” > > I have noticed that American scriptwriters seem to frequently get this wrong. I think these two posts sum up the issue and the answer best for me. It depends on how it is being used in a sentence, not as a stand alone title. So, if the authors called the show “I”, that would sound grammatically incorrect, even if as a title anything can go. There is no sentence with a one word title. But still, wouldn’t the play be better named “Me”? Thanks for all of the replies thus far. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/23 "2014-04-04T16:25:33Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > While i agree with what you are saying here, you misrepresent what I wrote. I didn’t tack on anything to the answer “The King and me”. So if someone says “who is in that picture?”, a complete sentence would be “the king and me.” Correct? Because if it was just me in that picture, the answer would be “me” not “i” No, if it were just you in the picture, you could indeed say “I” or “I am” or “It is I” without there being anything grammatically incorrect. If I remember my high school grammar correctly, in a sentence like “It is I,” the “I” is a predicate nominative, not a direct object, so it should be the nominative pronoun (“I”) rather than the objective “me.” If you want to be really grammatically precise, wouldn’t “I” always be a grammatically correct answer to “Who,” and “me” a grammatically correct answer to “Whom”? ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/24 "2014-04-04T17:30:25Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > No, if it were just you in the picture, you could indeed say “I” or “I am” or “It is I” without there being anything grammatically incorrect. > > If I remember my high school grammar correctly, in a sentence like “It is I,” the “I” is a predicate nominative, not a direct object, so it should be the nominative pronoun (“I”) rather than the objective “me.” > If you want to be really grammatically precise, wouldn’t “I” always be a grammatically correct answer to “Who,” and “me” a grammatically correct answer to “Whom”? There is no such thing as “grammatically precise”. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/25 "2014-04-04T17:30:29Z")
> [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](#): > > It’s mere prescriptivism today, but I recall being taught that ‘I’ is Subject and ‘me’ is Object. So it depends on whether or not “I” am a subject of the king in question? What if he objects? ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/26 "2014-04-04T17:54:18Z")
_The King and I_ is based on a movie called _Anna and the King of Siam_, which is based on a book also called _Anna and the King of Siam_. This book is semi-autobiographical, and written in the first person. Therefore, it is fair to guess that the whole sentence of which The King and I is a fragment, is something like “This is the story of the King of Siam and I,” which is in fact wrong. On the other hand, if it’s something like “Mongkut, the King, and I, Anna,” an emphasis on their social classes, and not part of a sentence, “I” is a better choice. It follows a titling convention, cf., I, Claudius. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/27 "2014-04-04T18:04:51Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > By the way, we get this construction from French – 1066 and all that. _“L’état, c’est moi,”_ not _“l’état, c’est je.”_. You’re about 600 years off there, dear, that’s (purportedly)[Louis XIV](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV_of_France) ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/28 "2014-04-04T18:38:40Z")
The example phrase is by Louis XIV. I doubt the use of the accusative as a disjunctive pronoun started with him as well. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2014, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/29 "2014-04-05T03:05:05Z")
More and more I’m hearing people using “I”, regardless of context. Especially TV journalists, who should know better. I think they’re assuming that somehow “I” is more acceptable, or more proper-sounding, which has the opposite effect of making them sound illiterate. For example, they’d never use the phrase “him and me,” in spite of the fact that in in certain contexts it totally correct. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2014, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/30 "2014-04-05T04:19:00Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > More and more I’m hearing people using “I”, regardless of context. Especially TV journalists, who should know better. I think they’re assuming that somehow “I” is more acceptable, or more proper-sounding, which has the opposite effect of making them sound illiterate. For example, they’d never use the phrase “him and me,” in spite of the fact that in in certain contexts it totally correct. Drives me nuts. Especially when they come up with “him and I.” ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2014, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/31 "2014-04-06T17:47:36Z")
And when they really haven’t got a clue whether it should be ‘him and me’ or ‘him and I’, they end up defaulting to the ridiculous ‘him and myself’. Nails on a chalkboard. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2014, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/32 "2014-04-07T03:30:18Z")
To me the problem does seem to come down to how we are to suppose the phrase fits into the rest of the unstated sentence. “Me and Bobby McGee” would fit into a context like"good enough for me and Bobby McGee. “The King and I” fits into “The King and I dance.” I don’t necessarily agree that we have to resort the assumption that using the subject/object distinction makes it necessarily a Latin rule applied to English usage. English does have these cases naturally, even if the forms of the words only continue to reflect them for a few pronouns anymore. This reminds me of a version I read of the Judgement of Paris. The golden apple had written on it “bellissimae” – which could mean several things, but we know in the story it means “to the most beautiful (female)”. The apple was thrown into a crowd with no preamble, and Ovid does not record anybody standing around saying “the most beautiful women do what?” (though my version will, whenever I get around to writing my own droll Roman comedy, right after I’ve finished translating Who’s on First). I have to suppose that the Romans would not have had the difficulty I have seeing that as just obviously saying what the story wants it to mean. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2014, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/33 "2014-04-07T03:32:33Z")
> [@Johnny\_Angel](#): > > I don’t necessarily agree that we have to resort the assumption that using the subject/object distinction makes it necessarily a Latin rule applied to English usage. I wasn’t talking about the case distinctions full stop, but about the case in the predicate where Latin uses the predicate nominative but French and modern English does not. It looks like historically English did, as well, so it’s a moot point. Latin is a parallel system, is all. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2014, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/34 "2014-04-07T04:39:25Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > I wasn’t talking about the case distinctions full stop, but about the case in the predicate where Latin uses the predicate nominative but French and modern English does not. It looks like historically English did, as well, so it’s a moot point. Latin is a parallel system, is all. It may well be that I have a naive view that it simply makes sense to use the subject case in expressions of this kind. On Lexicon Valley, Slate’s language podcast, linguist [John McWhorter](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/08/lexicon_valley_with_john_mcwhorter_on_why_prescriptivism_lives_in_all_of.html) claims that this is and the who/whom distinction are not real rules of English at all. Seems to me that if “Joey and me went to the park” is correct it’s because it’s an exception, not a rule. Latin also seems to have a lot of weird quirks, and at the risk of being taken to the woodshed some of these look like they’d be simply considered wrong if somebody hadn’t ratified them into rule status by documenting and naming them. ---
**Author:** ![NewUser100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8e8cbc/32.png) [@NewUser100](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NewUser100)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/35 "2014-04-10T14:38:44Z")
As I noted earlier, colloquialisms \*sometimes \*are how we speak "normally. That doesn’t change the grammar rule; they are simply accepted in the _ **exception** _ times that we use them. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/36 "2014-04-10T14:54:33Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > To add, the object case, “me,” is slowly expanding at the expense of the subject case, “I,” so that “Me and the King went to the store” is a common colloquial construction, acceptable in certain registers but absolutely forbidden in formal writing. This is kind of an interesting point. Or at least I’ve always found it interesting. I would _never_ say “I and Bob are going to the ballgame.” It would always be “Me and Bob are going to the ballgame.” Now, I suppose I can invert it, so it’s “Bob and I are going to the ballgame,” but that’s a very slightly different sentence. If I want to place the pronoun representing me at the head of the sentence (say, for emphasis), the only natural-sounding choice I have, I’d argue, is “Me and Bob.” (Or, I suppose, the even more maligned “Myself and Bob,” but let’s not go there yet.) There doesn’t appear to be a satisfactory formal way that will please the sticklers to write the sentence with that structure, unless I’m odd for thinking that “I and Bob are going to the ballgame” sounds ungrammatical and stilted. ---
**Author:** ![Melchior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/37 "2014-04-10T15:13:56Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > Should “The King and I” actually be “The King and Me”? > > If i have a picture of myself with a king, and someone says, “Who is in that in the picture?” Wouldn’t i say “The King and Me?” (Which could be turned around to read "Me and the king, which is correct, right?). In this case, “The king and I” = “us” > > But if I am going to a ballgame with the king, I would say “The King and I are going to the game.” In this case, “the king and I” = we. > > I can rationalize both ways, but which is grammatically correct for the title “The King and I”? Would it have been just as correct if it was called “The King and Me”? ‘The King and I’ is correct if the case is nominative (‘The King and I went to Siam’). ‘The King and me’ is correct if the case is dative (‘The book was a present to the King and me’) or accusative (‘The play was presented for the King and me’). ---
**Author:** ![NewUser100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8e8cbc/32.png) [@NewUser100](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NewUser100)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/38 "2014-04-10T18:07:40Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > This is kind of an interesting point. Or at least I’ve always found it interesting. I would _never_ say “I and Bob are going to the ballgame.” It would always be “Me and Bob are going to the ballgame.” Now, I suppose I can invert it, so it’s “Bob and I are going to the ballgame,” but that’s a very slightly different sentence. If I want to place the pronoun representing me at the head of the sentence (say, for emphasis), the only natural-sounding choice I have, I’d argue, is “Me and Bob.” (Or, I suppose, the even more maligned “Myself and Bob,” but let’s not go there yet.) There doesn’t appear to be a satisfactory formal way that will please the sticklers to write the sentence with that structure, unless I’m odd for thinking that “I and Bob are going to the ballgame” sounds ungrammatical and stilted. The issue is that the pronoun should\* not\* come first. One can’t use one grammatical error to justify then having to use a second grammatical error. Because a song’s lyrics put the pronoun first (“Me and my shadow”) does not make the structure correct in normal usage outside of the song. And I don’t see how there is any less emphasis using the correct structure (“Bob and I”) or any more emphasis using the incorrect one (“Me and Bob”). ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/39 "2014-04-10T18:21:27Z")
But why shouldn’t the pronoun come first? It certainly can in my spoken language (native speaker), suggesting it’s a stylistic preference and not a rule of grammar. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311/40 "2014-04-10T18:46:47Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > But why shouldn’t the pronoun come first? It certainly can in my spoken language (native speaker), suggesting it’s a stylistic preference and not a rule of grammar. Yes, it’s a fairly common rule of **syle** or **politeness** , not grammar, that “me” or “I” should come last. Cites: [http://www.learnersdictionary.com/blog.php?action=ViewBlogArticle&ba\_id=109](http://www.learnersdictionary.com/blog.php?action=ViewBlogArticle&ba_id=109) > **[Pronoun Order](https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/pronoun-order/)** > > Lately, people have been asking a lot of questions about pronouns and what order to put them in relative to nouns and other pronouns, so that’s our topic for today. Here’s an example of a question (changed slightly to protect the writer). We were... > [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question/685311.md?page=3)