Formally? No, but most people learn to speak long before they go to school.
I know exactly what it means. I’m not talking about “X and I” word-order type constructions, which are not points of grammar in the first place, but are linguistic markers of civil courtesy. But if a speaker uses “X and I” in the ovjective (the point to which the OP referred), I have every right to be circumspect about how carefully he has learned to regard logic and fundamental reasoning and fact-checking, as well as his ability to comprehend what it is we are talking about in the first place.
Well, as long as we’re making up rules about 13th chimes, I think mine will be misspelling objective.
Wow. Some people really go far with this line of thinking. I hear this type of construction everywhere, mostly actually in highly educated people who are overcorrecting. I heard it just yesterday on NPR, which did cause me to flinch a bit (not like I should talk, as I use “Me & Bob” type constructions colloquially in the subjective, knowing full well that “Bob & I” is the correct form.)
I can’t say I’ve noticed any increase in the use of “I” as the object of a verb. Seems like it’s always been a common hypercorrection, like the non-reflexive use of “myself” by speakers attempting a formal register.
I also commonly use “me and x” in the subjective. Somehow, using a less formal register than what teacher might recommend seems OK. It’s not hypercorrection, it’s undercorrection and solidly descriptivist.
I specifically wrote “to X and I”, not merely " X and I". I was referring to using nominative case pronouns as the object of a preposition when there is another object to that preposition linked with a conjunction. It is an ugly construction that violates the grammatical rules I was taught back in the 70s and 80s–but so what? The meaning is perfectly clear to any native speaker, and enough educated speakers use it nowadays that I’d say it qualifies as a change in the language akin to the merging of the accusative, dative, and prepositional into a single oblique case.
English is a living language, and thus its rules change to meet the needs of its users. Only languages no longer in common use have ossified grammar.
You can have my objective pronoun when you pry it from my cold, dead lips.
I have read that it was misused even several hundred years ago. The New Yorker several decades ago printed a column filler in which someone wrote to Ann Landers (or maybe her sister Abby) asking why the TV station allowed one of their anchors to sign off by saying goodnight “from X and me” which the writer thought incorrect. The answer was that grammatical standards were in decline and TV newscasters were more informal!
A colleague of mine writing a paper on mathematical linguistics mentioned to me that the simplest rule was to use “me” only in the context of following a verb or preposition and that writing a rule that covered “for you and me” was much harder. The real problem was that “and” can be used to coordinate between two (pro)nouns (“for him and me”, “for Alice and me”), between two prepositions (“by and for the people”), between two verbs, between two sentences, etc. As an example, consider the correct sentence: “John gave the book to him and I gave him another gift.” to illustrate the problem. So my colleague conjectured that many people were just automatically following the very simple rule that began this paragraph.
I used to work with someone who always said “myself” instead of “me” whenever he was on the phone (so dozens of times a day). I think he decided that because it’s a bigger word, it sounds more intelligent or formal. Sometimes it was hard to resist the urge to shake him and scream “JUST SPEAK NORMALLY!”
It’s similar to the use of “myself” outside of reflexive situations.
Sent to me this morning: “Please CC Joe, Legal, and myself.”
This. To people who have a knowledge of basic grammar, it sounds like fingernails scratching down a blackboard. I can understand why some people will correct others publicly over it.
I can’t. Pretty much everyone I know has some grammar or usage quirks, and most of these folks are well educated people, to say the least. The occasional grammar misstep or colloquial usage is universal, in my experience, and nothing to interrupt the flow of a conversation for. (And it seems like half the time, the types of people who point out these errors are actually wrong about them being errors.)
If you’re not their parent, teacher or boss, your corrections are neither appropriate nor welcome.
This.
Not only does everyone have their own grammar quirks, but the distinction between very common error and accepted usage is a slight one.
“Try and” and “could care less” used to be my pet peeves, but both are actually accepted variants, and my own opinion on such things has changed anyway: as long as the meaning is clear, it’s fine.
I’m not sure why. Not mastering grammar in no way implies that you aren’t, say, an excellent engineer.
QFT. My older brother Jay is an excellent and highly successful nuclear engineer (a better man than me by 21 out of 22 metrics), and he uses the word “irregardless” quite often. I used to chide him for that, but then I got a clue.
Especially when, as so often seems to happen, grammar is used not to refer to anything linguistic, but ‘words and phrases I don’t like’.
“The occasional grammar misstep or colloquial usage” seems to be in a different category from hypercorrection, which is mire like an affectation.
However you want to classify it, it doesn’t change my point.
Well, if someone is using at as an affectation, and is being smug about it, I think it’s okay to be annoyed, because affectations are annoying. But not every objective “I” is the result of an affectation.
Otherwise, yeah, being smug about other people’s minor grammar errors is silly. I’ve got a friend who never ends a sentence with a preposition, but he mangles the subjunctive all the time. I love me the subjunctive mode, but can’t be bothered to avoid terminal prepositions. So should we mutually write each other off as illiterates?