I don’t get to see Jeopardy that much these days, but I happened to catch yesterday’s episode. The lady in the middle (I forget her name) was, during the interview portion of the show, saying how she’s a real stickler for grammar. When Alex asked her what her biggest grammar pet peeve was, she replied, “The use of ‘I’ in the objective case.”
OK, I said to myself, that can be annoying. When people say things like “It’s a secret between John and I,” it is pretty bad, though I’m most definitely not one who corrects the grammar of strangers. Alex then asked her for an example of this pet peeve, and she said, “Well, if I were to say, ‘The winner will be Jane [or whatever was the name of the lady on her right] or I,’ that would be wrong.”
The problem is, it’s not wrong. That’s correct use of ‘I’ in the nominative, not objective, case (as a predicate nominative). “Will be” isn’t an action, so there’s no objective involved.
Is it just me, or if you trumpet your grammatical pet peeves to the world, should you know what you’re talking about?
(Just to clarify, it’s not like I went around the room telling everyone about this; in fact, this is the first mention I’ve made of it…)
Oh, I hate that! This lady on another board I frequent was going on and on about somebody writing “This is my friend and I,” so I had to explain to her that yes, that is actually correct. I still don’t think she got it.
God, that’s annoying. I’m surprised that one of the other contestants didn’t thwap her. I wonder if they caught the error at all.
Granted, pronouns in the nominative do sound a bit odd after some form of “to be.” I remember being laughed at when I said “this is she” on the phone. Oh, well.
Growing up, my grandfather would always correct me if I misused “I” or “me” in sentences.
Knowing this, I went up to him one day and said “So me and James went to the store…”
He immediately corrected me. “James and I.”
“No,” I said. “You weren’t there, I’d have remembered that.”
ooooooh lord. I doth slay me.
Yes, my students often “correct” me when I say things like that in class. They also think it’s hilarious when I say “sneaked” instead of “snuck.”
Again, I don’t go around correcting strangers’ grammar, but when a person (like the Jeopardy contestant or cocky students) mocks what is correct, it’s quite annoying.
Question. Why the heck do we use the nominitive form when it does actually sound pretty weird? Take “It is I” vs “It is me.” The former is obviously the technically correct form, but have you ever heard anyone in their right mind say “It’s I?” or “It’s we?” No. The form is always (in my experience, at least) “It’s me” or “it’s us.” “It is I” sounds very stuffy and formal; at least around my peers.
Now, interestingly enough, French does the same thing. “C’est moi” not the bizarre “C’est je.” They used the objective, where classical Latin grammar would dictate the nominative. Could this be a construction that somehow passed over from the French to English post-1066? Or is there some sort of natural instinct for us to want to use the objective case in this sort of construction?
It sounds formal because it is formal. I know that there is a difference between formal grammar and conversational grammar, and I do tell my students this too. Will you be understood if you say, “It is me”? Of course. But since what I am trying to teach is formal grammar, “It is I” is the one. Do I say “This is he” on the phone when someone asks for me? Yes, I do. Regardless of whether it sounds stuffy, that’s the formal and correct case to use, and I was taught to be proper on the phone.
Again, the purpose of this thread was not to criticize people saying, “It is me.” I just think it’s silly to claim to be a “grammar stickler” (as the woman on Jeopardy did) and be completely wrong. Either be conversational and be done with it or be a stickler and know the proper rules. You can’t claim to be annoyed by other people’s grammar if you yourself don’t know that they are actually right and you are wrong!