# Him and I, he and me, she and me, and I and he were discussing grammar and... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 12, 2010, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364 "2010-07-12T05:49:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/41 "2010-07-14T00:12:53Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > What a twerp. You can say that about any linguistic rule whatsoever. “[it] can be any case it wants”? Seriously. > > The main reason, I think, that Rhodes scholars and Ivy Leaguers screw it up is because of the thought process that goes into making such statements. My mom left me the following voicemail yesterday: > > “I just wanted to see what you were up to next weekend. Me, John, and Sara want to come down to visit and maybe go to Annapolis later.” > > Why’d she make that error? Because she hadn’t planned out that part of the sentence. Mentally point to your chest and identify yourself in the first person. Do you say “I” or “me”? If you’re like most, you say “me”. It’s the same reason you use to answer “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?” with “Who? Me?” > > So my mother knew she was calling to tell me about an impending visit. Her thought process went: > > _Tell him what you want to know_ > “…wanted to see what you were up to…” > _When?_ > “…next weekend.” > _Mention the visit. Say “visit Annapolis”_ > “We want to visit…” > _Wait! You should clarify who’s going. Who’s visiting?_ > “Me” > _Who else?_ > “John and Sara” > _OK, now mention the visit_ > “Me, John, and Sara want to come down…” Has your mom, _ever_, in your _entire_ experience with her, _ever_ said anything like the following? “At the meeting on Sunday… it was scheduled… **me** had scheduled it so we could talk about the leak… anyway, at the meeting we decided we should talk to the roofer this week.” ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/42 "2010-07-14T00:16:12Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Grammar rules should focus on clarity of communication. What’s clarity have to do with anything in this case? How is “Me and John are going to Six Flags” any less clear than “John and I are going to Six Flags”? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/43 "2010-07-14T00:23:19Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > What’s clarity have to do with anything in this case? How is “Me and John are going to Six Flags” any less clear than “John and I are going to Six Flags”? Too late to edit but, it occurs to me, the “Me and John” construction is likely to be _more_ clear. In conversational context, it will happen often enough that a sentence like “John and I went to Six Flags” will become garbled due to background noise, and listeners will be unsure whether to reconstruct “garble I went garble Six Flagarble” as containing the sentence “I went to Six Flags” or not. But “garble me went garble Six Flagarble” is going to be more easily reconstructed as involving a second person in the subject, though the identity of the person is unknown due to the garbling. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/44 "2010-07-14T00:31:00Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > What a twerp. You can say that about any linguistic rule whatsoever. “[it] can be any case it wants”? Seriously. Uh, Chessic? Do you know who Stephen Pinker is? Because you’re dismissing [one of the world’s foremost linguists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker) a little too quickly for someone who just heard of him. I’m with Pinker on this one. The proper study of grammar is absolutely **not** to make up rules and then chastise people who break them; this is like studying biology by deciding that animals having four legs, and then telling spiders they’re doing it wrong. The proper study of grammar is the study of how humans construct language. If this is a common construction that accurately conveys the speaker’s meaning, and does so transparently **unless** the audience has learned a certain prescriptivist rule, it’s absurd to blame the lack of transparency on the construction; rather, it’s the rule at fault. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/45 "2010-07-14T03:30:25Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Uh, Chessic? Do you know who Stephen Pinker is? Because you’re dismissing [one of the world’s foremost linguists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker) a little too quickly for someone who just heard of him. > > I’m with Pinker on this one. The proper study of grammar is absolutely **not** to make up rules and then chastise people who break them; this is like studying biology by deciding that animals having four legs, and then telling spiders they’re doing it wrong. The proper study of grammar is the study of how humans construct language. If this is a common construction that accurately conveys the speaker’s meaning, and does so transparently **unless** the audience has learned a certain prescriptivist rule, it’s absurd to blame the lack of transparency on the construction; rather, it’s the rule at fault. I’m a descriptivist myself, but I don’t see anything wrong with Chessic’s statement. He is clearly a prescriptivist, and the information given is enough to tell him that he will not agree with the guy. And his argument isn’t that great. “Any case it wants” tells us nothing, personifying the word, rather than telling us anything. Even as a descriptivist, it would be far more useful to explain why people choose one form over the other. (And, for a prescriptivist, to tell others why they might want to do likewise–like the “plural subject” explanation given above to make “She and I are happy,” grammatical. ) Finally, to address the “myself” thing: people tend to use it for emphasis. This is a valid use of the word, even in prescriptivist circles. The difference is that they would say it needs to have an “I” or “me” attached to it. For example: “Myself, I went to the store,” is perfectly grammatical. I am willing to guess that using “myself” for emphasis when speaking yourself in a group will become fairly standard. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/46 "2010-07-14T03:37:21Z")
Of course, the big difference between “John and me went to the store” and “she gave it to John and I” is that the former may be substandard or colloquial, but the latter is a hypercorrection. The latter never would have arisen if the attempt to stamp out the former had not given those who learned the rule incompletely the notion that “me” is somehow worse or less correct than “I” in general. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/47 "2010-07-14T06:26:35Z")
Subject = I Object = me I give the ball to me. Me give the ball to I. Which one sounds like a neanderthal? When you say “Me and Sally went to the store”, it’s like an 8-year-old trying to convince me it’s correct. Maybe it sounds good to your ear because you’ve said it wrong for decades, but, believe me, to many, if not most, people it sounds substandard and uneducated. But think whatever you like. Me is going to bed now. ---
**Author:** ![Manwich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@Manwich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manwich)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/48 "2010-07-14T10:02:54Z")
OK, I found a [relevant article](http://www.jstor.org/pss/4178979) from the journal Linguist Inquiry. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to JSTOR, so I can only read the abstract and a little of the first page. I suspect I would have difficulty understanding the contents, even if I could read it. Anyway, it seems to suggest that phrases like “Mike and me went to the store” are a natural part of English grammar. So when people are taught that it is wrong they find it hard to internalise the rule, and they overgeneralise and end up saying things like “she gave it to John and I”. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/49 "2010-07-14T13:09:10Z")
Yeah, and you know what’s just as bad? Myself. My brand new boss just sent out a reorganization message that ended with “If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact _blahdeblah_ or myself.” In what circumstance would you ever say “If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact myself”? “Me” has gotten such a bad rap that people won’t even use it anymore when it is the only **correct** grammatical choice. It burns my eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/50 "2010-07-14T13:43:09Z")
Well, I would have no problem saying, “Please do not hesitate to contradict **Leaffan** ”! 😃 To be a bit more serious, I think that several things are being confuted in this thread. First, there is the issue that some constructions are descriptively ungrammatical, that is, while intelligible, they are ways that would never be said by a native speaker or even a fluent ESL speaker. “Me go to the store” marks the speaker as a small child; “Is disliking this dish by you/”, a person of East Slavic extraction and halting use of English, trying unsuccessfully to literally translate a particular Slavic idiomatic construction. Second is the issue of varying _registers_. A usage seen as normal and acceptable in one context may be as out of place as breaking into the chicken dance in the middle of a stately ceremonial ritual in another context. Colloquial speech in various dialects including Standard American and Home Counties English as well as regionalisms, formal written English in varying standards, etc., may well have varying grammars. “Me ‘n’ Joey’re gonna go bike ridin’., ma, okay?” is not an erroneous construction – it’s good colloquial usage. But it is incorrect on several grounds in a more formal register – and that’s not prescriptivist pedantry; it’s describing what is sociologically expected by native speakers using the two registers. To give an example of a solecistic construction not referencing the colloquial/formal dichotomy, contemplate “I then crossbred the two strains for three daughter generations, and came out with the following array of characteristics.” This would not be out of place in an oral presentation concerning an experiment or an article on that experiment in a magazine, or in a letter about the experiment. But it would be very much incorrect as a part of a monograph or report in a scientific journal, where the expected “register” is to eschew the personal and report the procedure and results in a manner that ignores who conducted and reported them. “The two strains were then crossbred for three daughter genrations, with characteristics resulting as reported in Table 2 (q.v.)” would be the preferable statement in that register – not that the first-person statement is ‘ungrammatical’ but that it’s inappropriate for the ‘register’ of the chosen medium, the scientific journal. The “rules” of prescriptivism serve a valid purpose – to define for those not accustomed to using a given register, say formal written English of business letters and magazine articles, which forms from the colloquial register with which the prospective writer is familiar are appropriate and inappropriate in the unfamiliar register. In some ways, they act like etiquette references: : a person wishing to avoid giving offense and complying with social standards has a means of finding out what those social standards are. There’s nothing “wrong” in some abstract sense about violating them, of, e.g., addressing the Archbishop of Canterbury formally with “Dear Rowan”, but it may be counterproductive to the desired result. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/51 "2010-07-14T14:07:41Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > Yeah, and you know what’s just as bad? Myself. My brand new boss just sent out a reorganization message that ended with “If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact _blahdeblah_ or myself.” > > In what circumstance would you ever say “If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact myself”? > > “Me” has gotten such a bad rap that people won’t even use it anymore when it is the only **correct** grammatical choice. It burns my eyes. I’ve seen people use myself, when they aren’t being grouped with another, even. It’s another hypercorrection, they think it sounds more correct and more dignified than “me.” Myself should be reflexive. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/52 "2010-07-14T14:20:41Z")
I think the overuse of “myself” is a battle that has been lost, so much that it’s almost standard now. Still makes me cringe, but what can you do? Going back to a question that people have touched on, do prescriptivists really say things like “I and Bill went to the game”? I’m guessing not – they’d probably use “Bill and I” instead. But why? According to their rule, “I and Bill” is perfectly correct. If, in some formal context, one person used “I and Bill” and another used “me and Bill”, would they really correct the latter but not the former? It goes back to something that often comes up in these threads - prescriptivists’ rules tend to over-simplify grammar. There are rules, or more accurately conventions that are so widely observed as to be de facto rules, but they’re not that easy to pin down. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/53 "2010-07-14T14:26:43Z")
Well I, myself, will be using “me.” ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/54 "2010-07-14T15:33:48Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > If, in some formal context, one person used “I and Bill” and another used “me and Bill”, would they really correct the latter but not the former? As a proofreader, I would correct both of them; the second because it’s not grammatical (according to this standard), the first because it’s not idiomatic. ---
**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:** [July 14, 2010, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/55 "2010-07-14T16:00:41Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > As a proofreader, I would correct both of them; the second because it’s not grammatical (according to this standard), the first because it’s not idiomatic. I suppose this only occurs in speech, not writing, but sometimes you need the first person pronoun in the stress position. For example: “Did Mike and Sarah go to the movies last night?” “No, _me_ and Sarah went.” “Me” seems to be the only good way of idiomatically constructing that sentence. Sure, you can change it to “No, Sarah and _I_ went,” but that loses the feel of the sentence. Not sure this issue would come up in proofreading, though. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/56 "2010-07-14T16:20:58Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > Subject = I > Object = me > > I give the ball to me. > Me give the ball to I. Neither of those sentences have compound subjects, so they are not relevant to the topic. > [@](#): > > When you say “Me and Sally went to the store”, it’s like an 8-year-old trying to convince me it’s correct. Maybe it sounds good to your ear because you’ve said it wrong for decades, but, believe me, to many, if not most, people it sounds substandard and uneducated. But think whatever you like. Cite for “to many, if not most, people it sounds substandard and uneducated”? I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in the rural Ohio communities I grew up in, it was how people talked. I suspect that more people talk that way than you realize and either you don’t notice or your social groups speak differently. > [@Polycarp](#): > > Second is the issue of varying _registers_. A usage seen as normal and acceptable in one context may be as out of place as breaking into the chicken dance in the middle of a stately ceremonial ritual in another context. Colloquial speech in various dialects including Standard American and Home Counties English as well as regionalisms, formal written English in varying standards, etc., may well have varying grammars. “Me ‘n’ Joey’re gonna go bike ridin’., ma, okay?” is not an erroneous construction – it’s good colloquial usage. But it is incorrect on several grounds in a more formal register – and that’s not prescriptivist pedantry; it’s describing what is sociologically expected by native speakers using the two registers. This is correct. Unfortunately many prescriptivists are only aware of one register, typically based on formal written English, and ignorantly assume all other registers are “bad English”. ---
**Author:** ![Debdare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Debdare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debdare)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/57 "2010-07-14T16:28:12Z")
Never, ever, will it be him and I – or her and I, ever! It will always be him and me. Yes, a lot of so-called educated people on television, in courtrooms, in business, on the streets, etc. say “her and I…” That’s insane! They think they are speaking intelligently because for some reason, people think that using the word “me” is inarticulate. For example: The press wanted her and me to make a statement. – broken down: The press wanted her to make a statement. The press wanted me to make a statement. Another example: She and I went into the apartment to have a look. Alot of people would say “Her and I went into the apartment…” Broken down: Her went into the apartment? No! It would always be She and I, or He and I – never, ever her and I or him and I. It would always be him and me or her and me. Never she and me or me and he. ---
**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:** [July 14, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/58 "2010-07-14T16:58:39Z")
> [@Debdare](#): > > Never, ever, will it be him and I – or her and I, ever! It will always be him and me. Never say never when it comes to language. I’m not saying it will become standard anytime soon, but it’s absolutely possible it will. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/59 "2010-07-14T18:16:15Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I suppose this only occurs in speech, not writing, but sometimes you need the first person pronoun in the stress position. For example: > > “Did Mike and Sarah go to the movies last night?” > “No, _me_ and Sarah went.” > > “Me” seems to be the only good way of idiomatically constructing that sentence. Sure, you can change it to “No, Sarah and _I_ went,” but that loses the feel of the sentence. Faced with that situation, i would probably say something like: “No, _I_ went with Sarah,” or maybe, “No, Sarah and I went together.” If necessary, i might add something like “Mike wasn’t there,” or “Mike had to work.” ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364/60 "2010-07-14T18:56:21Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Never say never when it comes to language. I’m not saying it will become standard anytime soon, but it’s absolutely possible it will. Yep. Good example: “_Him and I_ are personal pronouns.” Properly constructed English sentence, albeit done precisely to validate “never say never”, and using the two pronouns as self-referential terms. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/him-and-i-he-and-me-she-and-me-and-i-and-he-were-discussing-grammar-and/546364.md?page=4)