A Question About "I" Vs. "Me"

July 31, 2009 1:19 AM

I understand the normal rules for "I" and "Me" in sentences, but I simply cannot figure out the answer to this example. What I want to say is that my dad and I are regional truckers (or me and my dad are regional truckers). If I stay true to the "I" vs."Me" formula I learned in school and eliminate the objective pronoun, the simplified version of the sentence can be written as either "I are regional truckers" or "me are regional truckers", and both of these look atrocious written down. I'm not a seasoned grammarian, but even I know that neither one of these seems to be the correct answer. Am I missing something?
posted by Buddy-Rey to writing & language (22 comments total)

You need to adjust the verb, etc. to agree with your pronoun. So, "I am a regional trucker" versus "Me is (or "Me am," neither is every right) a regional trucker." "I" is the correct word here.
posted by Polychrome at 1:24 AM on July 31

"I" and "me" are singular, "you and your dad" is plural. So you will have to use a different part of the verb "to be"...

I am
You are
He is
She is
We are
You all are
They are

My dad and I are truckers
I am a trucker
We are truckers

...

but not "Me are a trucker".
posted by emilyw at 1:27 AM on July 31 [2 favorites]

"I are regional truckers"

No, it would be "I am a regional trucker"
posted by delmoi at 1:32 AM on July 31 [1 favorite]

"No, it would be 'I am a regional trucker'"

True, but if I were to write it that way, I would be leaving out the very crucial second party (my dad). What I'm trying to figure out is this; bearing in mind that there are two of us, should the sentence read "my dad and I..." or "me and my dad..."?
posted by Buddy-Rey at 1:37 AM on July 31

My dad and I are regional truckers.
posted by Muirwylde at 1:40 AM on July 31 [1 favorite]

Subject: I
Object: me

In the sentence, are you being a regional trucker? Or is it being to you?

The former. You are the subject.

My dad and I is proper. My dad and me is incorrect.

Adding your dad to the sentence means the verb must be changed to the plural (I am => "we" are), but it doesn't alter the I/me split.
posted by Nonce at 1:44 AM on July 31 [1 favorite]

The point of this rule, is that you deliberately take your dad right out of the sentence, and the usage of "I" or "me" should still sound sensible. You are free to change ARE to AM, because that's a necessary part of removing a second person from the sentence.

If you would say "I am a trucker" then you should say "My dad and I are truckers".

Similarly...

"Ben asked my dad and me to drive to the store, so we did", is this right?
"Ben asked me to drive to the store, so I did" ... remove your dad completely and it sounds fine, so yes.
"Ben asked my dad and I to drive to the store, so we did" ... is this fine?
"Ben asked I to drive to the store, so I did"... remove your dad and it sounds daft.

Leaving out your dad is the whole idea.
posted by emilyw at 1:48 AM on July 31 [1 favorite]

The confusion here has of course been cleared up, and perhaps that's all that's needed. However, if this came up because you were using that formula to figure out whether to use "I" or "me", you should really just stop using the formula and start thinking purely in terms of subject vs. object. Ah, refreshing.
posted by flavor at 2:09 AM on July 31

Okay. I'll try to explain it clearly, if I can. Several people have gotten this right, but I figure it's worth it to get it as clear as possible.

‘I’ and ‘me,’ along with ‘her’/‘she,’ ‘him’/‘he,’ and ‘us’/’we,’ is one of the very few vestiges left in the English language of something which was once a major feature of European languages: a case system. We have different forms of verbs to distinguish when and for how long a particular action occurred—past tense, present tense, et cetera—and, in the same way, our languages used to have different forms of nouns to distinguish who or what an action happened to, who or what did the action, and so on.

(This led to a lot of versatility in languages, by the way; ancient Greek poetry benefited greatly from the fact that sentences could have almost any word order and still be understandable. English, like lots of languages today, relies on word order a whole lot to communicate the objects and subjects of sentences. “Joe snapped Bob with a pool cue” means something entirely different from “Bob snapped a pool cue with Joe.” But because of cases, in ancient Greek, you could say “cue pool snapped Bob with Jœ" and it would mean the same thing. German still has a case system; that's why they're allowed to stick all of their verbs at the ends of sentences the way they seem to love to do.)

Anyhow: because there are essentially only four cased words in English, you just have to try to remember how they're used. Each has three forms—nominative, accusative, and genitive—and they are used for the subject, the object, and the possessor in any sentence, respectively.

I, we, he, and she are all nominative, and each is used to designate the subject of the sentence, the person or thing doing the action.

Me, Us, him, and her are all accusative, and each is used to designate the object of the sentence, the person or thing to whom* the action is being done.

My, our, his, and her are all genitive, and each is used to designate a possessor.

_______________________________________________________________________
*And hey look! It's our other partially-cased word, who/whom. Who is nominative and whom is accusative, in case you're wondering; that fact can come in handy when trying to decide which to use. Use whom when there's an action being done to them; use who when they're doing it.

So, in short: remember, as emilyw says, to conjugate the verb correctly regardless of which case you use—“I are regional truckers” and “me are regional truckers” both sound atrocious not because you're using the wrong case but because you're not conjugating the verb correctly; ‘are’ should be ‘am’—and then just find the proper form. Always use ‘I’ if ‘we,’ ‘he’ or ‘she’ would work in the same place (‘I am a regional trucker’ / ‘we are regional truckers’ / ‘he is a regional trucker’ / ‘she is a regional trucker’); and always use ‘me’ when ‘us,’ ‘him’ or ‘her’ would normally function well (‘My brother hit me with a snowplow’ / ‘my brother hit us with a snowplow’ / ‘my brother hit him with a snowplow’ / ‘my brother hit her with a snowplow’). I don't think you'll have much trouble with the possessive.
posted by koeselitz at 2:46 AM on July 31 [20 favorites]

"My dad is a trucker." "I am a trucker."
"My dad and I are truckers."
"The only truckers here are my dad and I."

There are no objects in any of the above examples, just subjects, because the verbs are variations of "is"... Same reason you're technically supposed to say "This is he" and not "This is him".

If you said, "The trucker jobs were given to my dad and me," then "my dad and me" would be objects, since the verb here is "give" and not "is." (You guys aren't actually the jobs themselves.)

Other correct examples are "The trucker (subj) hired my dad and me (obj)," and "My dad and I (subj) enjoy driving trucks (obj)."

As Emily says, the easy way to "test" these constructions is to swap the plural nouns for just "I" or "me," and modify the verb if necessary (eg, you'd never say "The trucker hired I" or "Me enjoy driving trucks.")

...And while I'm fairly certain that saying "The trucker jobs were given to my dad and myself" is incorrect, I've been hearing "myself" get overused so much in the media (especially with celebrities and athletes, but also with writers and reporters), that I'm not sure what's right anymore.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 2:48 AM on July 31

Buddy-Rey: True, but if I were to write it that way, I would be leaving out the very crucial second party (my dad). What I'm trying to figure out is this; bearing in mind that there are two of us, should the sentence read "my dad and I..." or "me and my dad..."?

In other words, both are correct in different sentences; neither one is correct all of the time.
posted by koeselitz at 2:48 AM on July 31

I think the "correct" way to say it has been well-established above. However, in case you're not a native speaker and trying to determine how we native speakers speak: "Me and my dad are regional truckers" sounds just fine to me.
posted by losvedir at 3:35 AM on July 31

"Me and my dad are regional truckers" sounds just fine to me.

Yeah, everyone above has pretty clearly laid out what the grammarian rules say, and if I were writing a formal document or giving a speech, I'd stick with "My dad and I are regional truckers"...

...but if we're talking about casual conversation, "Me and my dad are regional truckers" is perfectly fine. Only pendants would correct you.
posted by muddgirl at 5:29 AM on July 31

A couple of things that koeselitz said just didn't sit quite right:

English, like lots of languages today, relies on word order a whole lot to communicate the objects and subjects of sentences.

It sounds like you're suggesting that case systems are a old feature of language that fewer and fewer languages have. However, a case system is simply a feature of a language that some have and some do not. There is a strong correlation between languages being verb-final and having a case system. And as it happens, the most common word order among the world's languages is verb-final word order.

German still has a case system; that's why they're allowed to stick all of their verbs at the ends of sentences the way they seem to love to do.

I know you are kidding a little bit, but this just isn't right, even in an exaggerated or joking fashion. You are making it sound like Germans have many verb positions available, including at the end of the sentence. But in reality, they have restrictions that force verbs to the end of the sentence under certain grammatical conditions. When you see a verb at the end of a sentence in German it is (pretty much) because it has to be there for that sentence; it is the default position. You can't just stick the verb at the end of any sentence. Now, when you see a verb at the very *beginning* of a sentence in German, or if you see the object being positioned ahead of the subject, then these are examples of German word-order versatility that may be connected in some way to the fact that it has a case system.
posted by kosmonaut at 5:50 AM on July 31 [1 favorite]

kosmonaut: It sounds like you're suggesting that case systems are a old feature of language that fewer and fewer languages have. However, a case system is simply a feature of a language that some have and some do not. There is a strong correlation between languages being verb-final and having a case system. And as it happens, the most common word order among the world's languages is verb-final word order.

There are, it is true, many languages with case systems; and the number of languages with case systems probably is increasing. I'm sorry to have implied otherwise; it's only that I come from the middle western linguistic background (Greek/Latin->Italian, French, and other romance languages) of which a primary feature is the dropping of the case system. English did have cases once upon a time, too; and we, like the romance language speakers, have relied more and more heavily on word order to communicate the relative significance of words.

me: German still has a case system; that's why they're allowed to stick all of their verbs at the ends of sentences the way they seem to love to do.

kosmonaut: I know you are kidding a little bit, but this just isn't right, even in an exaggerated or joking fashion. You are making it sound like Germans have many verb positions available, including at the end of the sentence. But in reality, they have restrictions that force verbs to the end of the sentence under certain grammatical conditions. When you see a verb at the end of a sentence in German it is (pretty much) because it has to be there for that sentence; it is the default position. You can't just stick the verb at the end of any sentence. Now, when you see a verb at the very *beginning* of a sentence in German, or if you see the object being positioned ahead of the subject, then these are examples of German word-order versatility that may be connected in some way to the fact that it has a case system.

I certainly don't know German well enough to argue this point; and I thank you for correcting me.

It's an interesting question in general, the importance of word order and its relative significance in various languages. I do know that in ancient Greek the versatility of the language with regard to word order leads to a dramatically different mode of emphasis than English, a mode of emphasis that is at once more intuitive and clearer and yet in certain ways more subtle. In English, we tend to emphasize words by making the word order more direct, or by making it more simple and less natural than we ordinarily would or repeating ourselves, as in when we say “I did not” rather than “I didn't” or when we say “I'll do it myself” rather than ‘I'll do it.’ (I'm sure there are better and more illuminating examples.) Whereas in ancient Greek, one is free to emphasize a word in the clearest way possible—that is, by placing the most important word first in a sentence or phrase. The best example, of course, being the beginnings of the Iliad and the Odyssey: μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος… The first seven lines of the Iliad say: “The rage [μῆνιν] sing [ἄειδε] to me, goddess, of Pelian Achilles…” Obviously this is pretty awkward in English, but in Greek, the phrasing is just right: the first word is emphasized most, then the second, then the third. The beginning of the Odyssey is similar; Homer is constantly using this aspect of the language.
posted by koeselitz at 6:39 AM on July 31

...but if we're talking about casual conversation, "Me and my dad are regional truckers" is perfectly fine. Only pendants pedants would correct you.
posted by muddgirl
ftfy
posted by Night_owl at 7:39 AM on July 31 [3 favorites]

I think the rule you use to figure it out is a really easy way to figure out which to use, and now that the confusion has been cleared up as far as the are/am thing, you should keep using it if it helps you. It's what I use and it's never failed me, whereas trying to remember the background behind the rules just confuses me further.
Of course, many linguists will tell you that a lot of the "rules" of English grammar that one might learn in grade school are either 1) made up and wrong, 2) made up after the fact to try to explain the way English-speakers already spoke through evolution of the language, 3) pointless. Ex: the "rule" that you shouldn't use a preposition at the end of a sentence.
posted by ishotjr at 7:52 AM on July 31

The easy rule is just to replace "me and my dad" with "us" and "my dad and I" with "we", since the former are accusative and the latter are nominative. So if you're ever not sure, try switching the the group with us or we - in this case, does "us are regional truckers" or "we are regional truckers" sound right?
posted by mdn at 8:04 AM on July 31

Here's the Wikipedia page on English personal pronouns, including some tables with the pronouns sorted by case.

If you google "English pronoun cases" you'll find lots more info.
posted by Tin Man at 8:45 AM on July 31

Only pendants would correct you.

And mothers.
posted by SLC Mom at 9:13 AM on July 31

> should the sentence read "my dad and I..." or "me and my dad..."?

It depends on how you want to come across. Both are perfectly good English; the former is more formal, the latter more colloquial. If you're writing for an audience that expects "correct" (i.e., formal with a dash of fake pedantry) English, use the former; if for an audience that would prefer natural-sounding colloquial English, the latter. It is just as silly to talk fancy in a dive bar as to talk colloquially at a job interview.

Anyone who tells you "my dad and I" is "correct" because of some folderol about accusatives and subjects and objects is wrong; English does not work that way.
posted by languagehat at 11:41 AM on July 31 [7 favorites]

languagehat: Anyone who tells you "my dad and I" is "correct" because of some folderol about accusatives and subjects and objects is wrong; English does not work that way.

This is absolutely true. While the history is interesting and fun, language isn't a game of cricket, in which rules are to be followed by rote. It's more like a game of Mornington Crescent, where you get to make up the rules as you go along; the point is to get meaning across, and whatever does that is successful language, regardless of ‘rules.’
posted by koeselitz at 7:01 PM on July 31 [1 favorite]