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Unless you're a Rasta, in which case "give it to I" is perfectly acceptable and even to be encouraged.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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The silly thing is that the whole "James and I" stupidity emerged from the desire to be grammatically correct. People hear that "James and me went to the movies" should be "James and I went to the movies," and then over-apply that "intellectual" switch to the wrong situation.
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Actually, it's not true that it's simply hypercorrection, nor is it true that certain speakers don't know the difference between a subject and an object. People who say things like "give it to James and I" do not use pronoun forms interchangeably; it's always when there's a compound noun phrase functioning as an object that the nominative form is used. You never see the same sort of error when it's a single pronoun.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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That's the point, Jon Boy. The reason that one would make the mistake with a compound subject is that one does not know the actual rules; rather, they just know the sound of the word, and, if they have been hearing good enough English, the sound of the language is enough to give them grammar for 99% of occasions.
The same lack of grammatical acumen is seen in the errors involving use of "who" and "whom".
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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It is likely true that some (many?) people who misuse forms like "James and I" do know the difference between a subject and an object. But certainly many do not.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Yeah, so is "all right" as two words. I, nonetheless, refuse to change. Although I've eagerly embraced the somewhat simplified "all singular nouns add 's in the possessive, regardless of last letter." Too bad about the Jesus/ Ulysses grandfather clause...it's almost a simple apostrophe rule.
Posts: 834 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Also, Grandma, being a revered matriarch, is worthy of capitalization.
True. My bad. But the peeve in this case involves the word "bring."
Perhaps, but you could just as easily correct the sentence to "Bring those goodies to Grandma", provided, of course, it is Grandma who is speaking. Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Should I mention that my parents learned English as their third and fourth languages? So, growing up, we spoke English using incorrect sentence structure and word usage because my parents spoke as though they were translating directly from Plautdeutsch to English. Which they were.
In Plautdeutsch, there is one verb which means both to borrow and to lend. It took me decades to learn the proper usage of To borrow and To lend, and I'm not convinced I've yet got it completely right. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Sibyl: Then there's "any more", which these days is almost universally "anymore". It annoys me, and I try not to get annoyed any more.
I've seen people write "eventhough" as a single word. Maybe it's because of "although", but it irks me.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by quidscribis: In Plautdeutsch, there is one verb which means both to borrow and to lend. It took me decades to learn the proper usage of To borrow and To lend, and I'm not convinced I've yet got it completely right.
Most Americans don't know the difference between imply and infer. So don't feel bad.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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"James and me went to the store" is perfect English. The fact that English teachers (btw, I AM an English teacher) insist that this isn't "proper" English is that a particular dialect of English (we'll call it "Standard") is taught in school in which the disjunctive form of personal pronouns is not accepted in coordinated subject position. However, most other dialects of English DO permit this. I would imagine that almost every American, for example, and one point or another during a given week, uses the supposedly improper "objective pronoun as subject" form. It's not the objective case... it's the disjunctive. Same reason I'd use "me" in the following dialog—
"Who is it?"
"It's me."
"Standard" English says I ought to say "It's I," as the pronoun is in the predicate nominative slot. But that's total crap. In nearly every dialect of American English, you use the disjunctive in this instance.
Sometimes I really hate being an English teacher... :sigh:
French speakers are very familiar with the disjunctive... it's used all the time in that language.
quote:Originally posted by Sibyl: Then there's "any more", which these days is almost universally "anymore". It annoys me, and I try not to get annoyed any more.
Sibyl
I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about this; "any more" looks like an error to me, so I had to look it up. Here's what Merriam-Webster's says:
quote:Although both anymore and any more are found in written use, in the 20th century anymore is the more common styling.
Interesting link. In Spanish, the "object of a preposition" dilemma for personal pronoun is thorny, too. Some pronouns are in the objective (dative) case, others in the nominative.
Este reloj es para ti. (This watch is for you [objective].)
Este reloj es para mi. (This watch is for me [objective].)
Este reloj es para él. (This watch is for him [nominative... literally "for he"].)
Este reloj es para ella. (This watch is for her [nominative... literally "for she"].)
Este reloj es para ellos. (This watch is for them [nominative... literally "for they"].)
And so forth. "Between you and me" is "entre tú y yo" literally "between you and I."
I really am not hung up over this like some people, though I do use the "Standard" (read: proper) English forms.
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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A friend and I have been having a debate for the past six months about a simple sentence we both use constantly at our job.
My friend insists that it must be "Seventeen cents ARE your change," because, of course, cents is plural.
However, everyone else I know says "Seventeen cents IS your change," and I suspect that the common usage is correct, but I can't really articulate why. My best guess is that it must have something to do with the fact that change (like fish) isn't really a word that is pluralized normally-- a collective noun?-- and that in some sense, the non-plural "change" is actually the subject of the sentence, making "is" the correct verb-form.
Anyone have any insight? Ideally, I'd like to change my coworker's mind, but if I'm wrong, I'd like to know. I'm starting to find myself saying, "Seventeen cents ARE your change" too.
Posts: 1751 | Registered: Jun 1999
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Just because a noun has the form of a plural doesn't mean it has to have a plural verb (the converse is also true—grammatically singular nouns do not always take grammatically plural verbs). Things like money and time are mass nouns (not collective nouns) and almost always take singular verbs. In other words, you're not dealing with a number of cents, but with an amount of money.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I emailed the grammar tip website, and to my surprise got this email back in less than twenty-four hours:
quote:You are right, Dean. Amounts of money, time, and distance are treated as single units. We would say, therefore, "Ten dollars is a lot of money," "Three hours is a long time," or "Five miles is a long way to run."
In case your friend isn't convinced simply by my saying it is so, here are two links to Web sites that back me up. You can find many more by going to a search engine and typing in "subject verb agreement money time distance":
posted
My coworker and I made a deal. I will no longer leave people notes on paper towels, and he will say "Seventeen cents is your change" while in my presence.
Posts: 1751 | Registered: Jun 1999
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Although I've eagerly embraced the somewhat simplified "all singular nouns add 's in the possessive, regardless of last letter." Too bad about the Jesus/ Ulysses grandfather clause...it's almost a simple apostrophe rule.
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