Me and him went shopping?

September 14, 2009 9:01 AM

Why is incorrect pronoun usage so prevalent?

I hear people say the following types of sentences all the time in person, in movies, on tv, etc.

"Me and her went shopping."

"He went to the baseball game with her and I."

"Us guys are going to the bar."

I've always been under the impression that these grammar constructs are incorrect simply because you can't say "Me went shopping" or "He went to the baseball game with I." or "Us are going to the bar."

1) Why is this poor grammar so prevalent when it is relatively easy to deconstruct into the single pronoun forms and determine that it is incorrect? (Meaning, most people would not say "Me went shopping." is correct)

2) Why do they put this into scripted movies and tv shows when it's obviously wrong? Is it to seem more authentic?

3) I definitely seem to notice this more from people in the northeastern United States than I do in the southeastern part where I'm from (we have different grammar problems here). Is this just my imagined personal bias, or is there something regional to it?

posted by bengarland to education (55 comments total)

Of course there is the possibility that I am the one who is wrong :)
posted by bengarland at 9:09 AM on September 14

If you understand what they meant, there is no problem. C'est la langue.

1. People don't care or know enough to bother.
2. Authenticity, yes; also, writers and actors are humans, and are therefore capable of astounding ignorance.
3. Both dialects and school curricula tend to be regional, so, yeah, maybe.

Again, though, the only issue here is your own pedantry.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:10 AM on September 14 [2 favorites]

Me suspect that it must be related to the poor state of us public school system.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 9:12 AM on September 14 [6 favorites]

You are correct.

Most people don't care about grammar in their ordinary speech, and let a thousand flowers bloom on that one.

The "just between you and I" people, however, are generally trying and failing to be correct, because someone taught them that it's not polite or genteel to use "me" in formal speech. If I had a time machine, I would go back to the 19th century and find the person who came up with that particular bit of nonsense and beat them soundly about the head and shoulders with a copy of Johnson's Dictionary.

Then there are the people who know that "just between you and I" is incorrect, but who still have a phobia of saying "just between you and me" so they say, instead, "just between you and myself." Drowning is too good for whoever taught them that.
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:12 AM on September 14 [13 favorites]

First of all, if I know Metafilter, you're going to be inundated with answers saying there's no such thing as good or bad English because it's all about popular usage. (These comments will almost invariably be written with textbook-perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation.)

That said, I know exactly what you're talking about, and I'm not sure why this is so common. A couple thoughts:

(1) Your trick of mentally omitting the second subject or object (leaving just the pronoun) is a very good idea but simply doesn't occur to people when they're talking. Most people just spontaneously use whatever words occur to them and don't spend much longer thinking about it than it takes to say it.

(2) People say things like "Give it to John and I" because they (mistakenly) imagine that "I" is more formally correct than "me." They might be thinking about the classic hyper-correct lesson that you're supposed to say "It is I" rather than "It is me" (which is a completely different issue). Unfortunately, this explanation is at odds with the fact that people say "Me and John are going to the store."

I wish I could be of more assistance.
posted by Jaltcoh at 9:13 AM on September 14 [2 favorites]

I think part of the answer for 1) is that the correct pronoun doesn't come naturally to everybody. When I'm speaking, I rarely pause to deconstruct my sentence before it comes out. I may realize it was wrong after I've spoken, but the correct word is not always what's on the tip of my tongue.

With regard to 3) it's most definitely imagined personal bias. People all over the southeast use this specific type of poor grammar just as often as others do. It might be obfuscated by the other poor grammar they're (we're?) using at the same time?
posted by This Guy at 9:13 AM on September 14

1) Because it makes sense either way. As long as people get the meaning, most people don't feel obligated to be grammatically correct, outside of not sounding like a caveman. "Me went shopping."

2) As a writer, my job is to have the character talk how he would talk, if he was a real person. So if he's an English teacher or a pedant, I would have him use absolute perfect grammar. Otherwise, not so much.

Personally, I often say "me and my friend" or something like that. I am 100% aware it is not "correct," but I just like the way it sounds. It reminds me of how we talked as kids, and frankly "My friend and I" just sounds forced and stilted and like English class. I am a semi-professional writer and my father is an English teacher. So people making these "mistakes" may be very well aware what they're doing.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:14 AM on September 14 [2 favorites]

First of all, if I know Metafilter, you're going to be inundated with answers saying there's no such thing as good or bad English because it's all about popular usage.

There's no such thing as good or bad English because it's all about popular usage.

There are rules emerging from specific social contexts, sometimes with justifications based on clarity, consistency or efficiency. But the rules are social constructs, obviously. (This is all AskMe cliche, but it's also true.) Breaking them often acts as a kind of social indicator, too. Precise adherence to the rules can sound snooty or condescending, while treating the rules more casually can sound "authentic", informal, relaxed or cool. I'm not saying people do this consciously.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 9:22 AM on September 14 [5 favorites]

Well the answer to (2) is simply that if movies and tv shows only scripted the "correct" version, they wouldn't be accurate - they wouldn't reflect real life.

This kind of stuff happens in every single language, and has been happening in English during its entire existence, and thus the logical conclusion is that it's completely natural human behavior. One day, "Me and Johnny went to the store" may even be "correct." Already a number of pronoun "errors" have become incorporated into the language - think about the answer to the question "who is it". Do you say, "it is I?" - probably not. You'd say "It's me." But that was wrong for a long, long time.

As others have noted, and at the risk of continuing the MeFi broken record, it's not "poor grammar." It's really not. "Me went shopping" IS poor grammar. Why? No one says it. Though, if it started to be said, it's not difficult to understand, is it?

All that said, I don't have an answer to why specifically pronouns in English see a lot of deviation from the grammar books, and I'll be watching this thread to see if someone does!
posted by ORthey at 9:24 AM on September 14

In my experience, in school there's a lot of "this is correct" and not very much "here is why this is correct." So the difference between objects and subjects isn't explored very well, leading to things like "with I." Because people just try to go with what sounds right and don't really know the reasoning. There's also more focus on reading/essay writing than on grammar in English classes.

That aspect of the US education system struck me when I studied abroad in France, and the students there (middle and high-school aged) knew the names of all the tenses (past perfect, etc.) and knew their grammar much more solidly than their US counterparts do. How useful this is is up for debate of course.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 9:25 AM on September 14

I studied Linguistics and English in college and here's what I learned: There is a difference between what human language allows [in the brain] and what is considered grammatical by people. If you do a search for "Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Grammar" you'll find tomes on the subject.

Descriptive Grammar is what Jaltcoh was alluding to above: it is a description of how people actually talk. Prescriptive Grammar is text book grammar that people have decided upon using language roots and conventions. As a student of linguistics we mostly talked about descriptive grammar, as a student of English we mostly talked about prescriptive grammar.

The language center in the human brain allows for all sorts of fun weirdness--I remember watching a video about a young child whose parents spoke English, but he used German grammar (reversing the order for subject object verb) for a while until that "switch" in his brain corrected itself. The things that people say naturally are part of natural language. The things that you describe above are rules that humans have decided are important for language and so if they haven't trained themselves to follow those rules, they will do what comes natural to them.
posted by Kimberly at 9:25 AM on September 14 [2 favorites]

Also, I don't really get the need to deconstruct sentences along the lines of "well, if you take out the 'johnny' then it's just 'me went to the store.'" You AREN'T taking out the 'Johnny.' It's still there. Spoken language often strays from what 'should be,' and simply just is.
posted by ORthey at 9:26 AM on September 14

"Us guys are going to the bar."

I've always been under the impression that these grammar constructs are incorrect simply because you can't say "Me went shopping" or "He went to the baseball game with I." or "Us are going to the bar."

"Us guys" is colloquial and (in some cases of TV uses) regional. Us guys from New Jersey or New York would never say "We guys are going to the bar."
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:26 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]

I went through what were allegedly "good" schools in the eighties and nineties, and at no point during my twelve years of elementary education did any of my English teachers do any lessons on grammatical cases, nor was the term 'objective case' ever mentioned until I started studying a foreign language.

Spoken language, however, breaks all the rules. It always has, it always will.
posted by coryinabox at 9:29 AM on September 14

Language is for conveying meaning, not for practicing a set of outdated and archaic rules, many of which people don't understand anyway. Also, dialect mixture, semantic and syntactic ambiguity, and disincentives to care about these details add to the general confusion about pronouns. It's not just the 1st person sg. and pl. nominatives and accusatives that are in flux right now. The whole system is changing. It always has been. It's actually really, really cool once you start examining it. Don't be afraid of change.

If you want to dive in and get your hands really dirty in it right away, start with looking at forms of ergativity in the English language, or just ergativity in general. Not necessarily saying that ergativity is what's going on here, but its a fun place to start when examining ways pronouns can organize themselves in various languages.
posted by iamkimiam at 9:32 AM on September 14 [3 favorites]

You are wrong. It's not your fault, almost everyone is taught a load of bullshit in school (or by their parents) under the guise of "good English," and hardly anyone takes a linguistics class, which is the only place they'd learn about how language actually works. To take one of your examples, you can't compare "Me and her went shopping" with "*Me went shopping" (the asterisk means the sentence is ungrammatical in the true sense, i.e., something that no native speaker would say), because they're two different things. Double pronouns are treated differently from single ones. I appreciated your "I might be wrong" comment, because it shows an admirably open mind; I hope you'll follow up on the comments here from people who actually know what they're talking about (hi, iamkimiam!) and learn some of the basic linguistic findings about English. Truth is actually a lot more interesting than bullshit, plus it's true!
posted by languagehat at 9:44 AM on September 14 [6 favorites]

There are several different things contributing to what you are noticing:

1) The inappropriate use of I is probably an example of hypercorrection.

2) The fact that you notice this more in the Northeast than the Southeast is probably because you're from the Southeast. The Southeast is the home of the most notorious nonstandard pronoun of all: "y'all".

3) American English has some areas where its collection of pronouns is in conflict with people's social goals: the gender thing for example. People are always saying, "If someone asks for your help, you should give it *them*." Most people would say this is not standard English, but give it some time, the desire for ungendered third-person pronouns seems so strong that I'll be surprised if that genie gets back in the bottle. Is so weird reading textbooks now where the authors specifically address why they used "he" or "she" so much, or where they spend time obviously alternating and trying to keep things balanced. All this "s/he" stuff is ridiculous, its totally possible that "they" will take over, as it has in other languages.

Another area where this comes up a lot is second person pronouns: "you"'s dominance of the singular, plural, accusative and nominative seems to run against some deep bias people have, because regional English speakers keep coming up with replacements for one or another: "y'all", "youse", etc..I think in some regional dialects of English in the UK they maintain words like "thou".

There's also the issue of English lacking formal address pronouns, which seems to rub people the wrong way. Sometimes people just use plurals or change cases, as other languages do (German for some pronouns), like the royal "We", but other times people jump through all kinds of weird hoops to avoid saying "you" to someone they feel they should be addressing respectfully. It seems a lot of people feel weird saying "you" to their bosses, grandparents, people who would traditionally be accorded a degree of respect or deference that gets encoded in language. Lacking an easy way to do this in English seems to lead people to come up with all sorts of weird constructions.

Also, on the script thing, seriously? Since when is having grammatically correct English relevant to scripts? Have you ever watched the sopranos or the wire? Generally, using authentic regional dialects wins the props in the scriptwriting game I think. That goes back to like at least Mark Twain in American writing.
posted by jeb at 9:49 AM on September 14 [2 favorites]

The fact is, that English as it is spoken natively by most Americans (probably other dialects too) doesn't have a very clear system of case assignment for conjoined noun phrases, and most speakers will accept/produce a range of variants. The rule of thumb you cite (remove one conjunct and check) is certainly not a rule of English, and probably never has been -- it is the kind of thing that is made up by someone who wants a clear and straightforward rule to give to 6th graders. The fact that you notice it so much illustrates the point -- people who weren't taught this rule (or didn't internalize it) fall back on what they learned when acquiring the language as a child (a process that does not involve anyone teaching them anything), which may very, and certainly won't obey the rule. As others have pointed out above, there is no good justification for enforcing such a rule, since you understand perfectly well what any of these variants mean.

The more interesting question is not why people are "wrong", but what it is about grammar that is so flexible as to allow this kind of variation.
posted by advil at 9:51 AM on September 14

"Me and her went shopping."
Slangy street cool.

"Us guys are going to the bar."
Cutesy macho posing.

"He went to the baseball game with her and I."
Immigrant or drunk.

It's not that they're right or wrong, it's the way they're wrong that communicates more than textbook grammar might. It's not necessarily accidental or ignorant on the speaker's part, either. They just might not want to sound pretentious or white collar.

Now then, we fellows are off to the pub. You lot may carry on.
posted by rokusan at 9:52 AM on September 14 [2 favorites]

Well, regarding the scripts, I'm primarily interested in the chosen dialog for educated people like lawyers, doctors, and cops. I probably should have made that clear.

No, I don't think gangsters on TV should be using proper grammar :)
posted by bengarland at 9:54 AM on September 14

Almost everyone is taught a load of bullshit in school (or by their parents) under the guise of "good English."

Yeah, that.

The problem is that English is a snakepit of non-rules, so every teacher, chock full of good intentions, takes it upon themselves to come up with "rules" that are more like scientific theories.

They "work" in that they describe some of the phenomenon enough to predict (prescribe) future applications, but such "rules" are actually just descriptive patchwork themselves: convenient tricks to remember how (most) English works.

Spelling too. I before E, and all that.
posted by rokusan at 9:57 AM on September 14

BTW, using "they" as the indeterminate gender singular pronoun is not new, it was correct way back when, then got ignored for a while, and now it's back.
posted by Aquaman at 9:58 AM on September 14

"...almost everyone is taught a load of bullshit in school (or by their parents) under the guise of "good English," and hardly anyone takes a linguistics class, which is the only place they'd learn about how language actually works."

It's funny how, on the one hand, there's no such thing as "correct" English grammar because language is a social construction in which popular usage rules the day, and yet the supposedly pedantic (mis)education to which the notion of "proper" grammar is generally attributed is, itself, described as a social convention so widespread that "almost everyone" is affected by it. Wouldn't that make the pedantic approach to English grammar correct, as well?
posted by onshi at 10:00 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]

I'm primarily interested in the chosen dialog for educated people like lawyers, doctors, and cops.

In practice I do agree with your point actually, which should actually be: "Why is the dialogue on many TV shows in America terrible? Why do scientists mispronounce and fail to explain basic science vocabulary and concepts? Why do supposed English teachers use un-educated grammar tenses in contrast to their character's background?"

The answer is long but the short version is: Because of Pilot Season.

But if your point was about people in general talking colloquially instead of being proper all the time, try hanging out with some lawyers, doctors, and, especially, cops. They talk proper English, like she is spoke anywhere else. Ain't no such thing iz uh "good" or "bad" Language. Bamma!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:09 AM on September 14

there's no such thing as "correct" English grammar because language is a social construction in which popular usage rules the day

There is descriptively correct English -- you can study what speakers do, and they are quite consistent. This kind of "correctness" is determined by a non-conscious language acquisition process occuring between the ages of approximately 0 (actually earlier) and 12 years. So language is a very deterministic "social" construction originating out of very specific uncontrollable cognitive processes in child development, whereas prescriptive rules are a social construction originating out of, well, whatever kinds of things a fairly random group of people over the last few hundred years decided to make up, for varying reasons. So no, the pedantic approach to English is not correct just because lots of people believe some bizarre prescriptive rules -- that isn't what it takes to make something part of a language..
posted by advil at 10:09 AM on September 14

I think the fact that more and more people are expanding their vocabulary through watching television rather than reading books may explain the upswing in improper usage.
posted by stubborn at 10:12 AM on September 14

Most people would say this {singular "they"} is not standard English

And those people are almost always the "just between you and I" people. Singular "they" is standard English to everyone except 19th-century prescriptivist fussbudgets and the hellspawn of elementary-school English teachers they left behind.

I think the fact that more and more people are expanding their vocabulary through watching television rather than reading books may explain the upswing in improper usage.

There is no "upswing in improper usage" even if you believe in "improper usage." People were wringing their hands about every single one of these things in the 19th century in the US. If you read letters, diaries, and court transcripts of that era, you will encounter pretty every thing that prescriptivists moan about (including some things I hate a lot like "should of" and "I could care less").
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:16 AM on September 14

Nouny things (called noun phrases, though a noun phrase can be as short as a single pronoun) act very oddly when they include 'and' or 'or'. The case of the noun phrase itself doesn't -- in English -- always correspond to the case of the parts, as you can see in your examples above. This is very clear with number: "[An apple and a glass of milk] are a delicious snack." The entirety of the subject is plural, but each part is singular. A noun phrase containing or, on the other hand, decides if it's singular or plural based on the last noun in it. (I'm simplifying here, obviously.)

Especially since the only vestige of case English has is here and there in the pronoun system, it's easy to just use the default pronoun, which is the object one in English. This explains things like "Him and me went to the store". People are told that this is incorrect or non-standard, but since mostly they do not understand case (which is fine, since we don't use it in English: I do wish that tense and aspect were better taught, however), they generalise and use 'I' even when 'me' would be appropriate.

I have no idea if it's more or less prevalent in different regions, but the reason you will hear it in scripted shows is that they want it to sound like people talk. I assume that in novels it would appear more when someone is speaking than in a descriptive passage.
posted by jeather at 10:28 AM on September 14

People misuse grammar because
- they are insufficiently educated,
- they are part of a culture that uses certain speech forms,
- they don't care,
- they intend to use non-standard language for some reason,
- some combination, or all, of the above.

For many years, even basic literacy was pretty uncommon. Now, we have widespread basic literacy, but any glance at Craigslist will reveal that many people can't spell, write a sentence, use standard grammar, etc. It matters when people can't make themselves understood, or if someone wants to appear educated, but their speech or writing reveals poor grammar. I thank Mrs. Munson for making us diagram sentences in high school.
posted by theora55 at 11:07 AM on September 14 [3 favorites]

There's no such thing as good or bad English because it's all about popular usage.

I agree with this and with what poor languagehat has to inject into thread after thread. But I think one of the problems is that that linguists don't make their point in a way that makes logical sense to non specialists. (I suspect that they don't, because doing so gets into some complicated philosophical waters).

When I hear someone say that such and such is not correct English, I immediately think, "Oh yeah? Who gets to say what's correct and why should I care about that person's opinion?"

On the other hand, when someone says, "Language is for conveying meaning," or "there's no such thing as good or bad English," I also feel like saying, "According to you! And why should I care what you think?"

I can only think of three contexts in which it makes sense to label something as good or bad:

1) Depending on one's belief system, a thing can be "cosmically" good or bad, as in "God hates your apple pie, so we can definitely say it's bad." I can't imagine anyone here making such a grandiose claim about language rules. God didn't tell us to avoid "ain't" in the Ten Commandments.

2) If you consider using an object for a specific task, that object can be good or bad at the task. A hammer is good at hitting nails. A hammer is bad at helping you pull a splinter out of your foot. But a hammer isn't good or bad when disconnected from any specific task. A hammer just is.

If you define language as being "for conveying meaning" then, yes, "me and Joe are going to the store" conveys meaning just as well as "Joe and I are going to the store." But that's stacking the deck. Of course I'm going to be right about my claim if I get to set all of its parameters. You tell me that "Waterworld is a terrible movie." I counter by saying that the whole point of movies is to help you get to sleep. I couldn't say awake for more then ten minutes of Waterworld. Therefor it's a good movie.

To be fair to the "language is for conveying meaning" camp, my guess is many people think this is true (that's how they define the purpose of language) -- even people who care (or think they should care) about standard usage. So maybe it's better to take a Socratic method.

Fred: I hate it when people use bad grammar, like "me and Joe are going shopping."
Mary: What do you think language is for?
Fred: It's for conveying meaning.
Mary: Doesn't "me and Joe" convey meaning?

It's key that we agree about what language is for before we try to determine whether it's good or bad at that task.

Or, you'd rather make a claim than get into a dialogue, you can say, "I'm starting with the stance that language is for conveying meaning. If you disagree with that, we can argue that out later. But assuming that's true..."

3) Something is good or bad if a particular group labels it good or bad (and if you accept that group as an authority). I don't think there's such a thing as a good or bad movie or book, but the Academy and the Nobel committee disagrees with me, and many people take them seriously. Linguists need to explain why we shouldn't care what all of our English teachers tell us.

Though I basically share languagehat's view, I am a little nervous about saying "there's no such thing as good or bad language," except as a sort of conversational shortcut.

What I can say is that it's a fool's errand to try to regulate language (and a waste of time to argue about correct usage) because you will fail. History shows us that popular usage wins out. That's not right or wrong (unless you label it as such). It's just how things are.

I HATE text-message writing. I hate it when people spell for as 4 and you as u. Well, guess what? I lose. I can grumble about it if that makes me feel better, but I lose anyway. People are GOING to do it. So what's the point of calling it bad other than just label something?

So there's little utility in fretting and arguing about "correct usage" unless you're doing it for reasons that have nothing to do with language (e.g. to prove you're one of the educated elite, in which case it might serve you very well. Or to vent about "LOL").

Also, as languagehat mentioned, language is NOT an anything-goes game. It's much looser than what our English teachers taught us, but there are plenty of constructs that no one will ever use (unless they're trying to be cute or are hired by Sesame Street). So if you choose to, you can label language that naturally arises as "good" and language that never naturally arises as "bad." And that may be a useful way to apply the words "good" and "bad."

I also wish Linguists would connect what they say to aesthetics. On the one hand, I feel that "me and John" is not good or bad. On the other hand, I feel that Shakespeare writes better than Dan Brown. Most people feel that there IS an aesthetics to language that goes beyond conveying meaning. How does that fit into linguistic theory?
posted by grumblebee at 11:23 AM on September 14 [2 favorites]

I'm am pretty good example that even if you are exposed to more of the intricacies of grammar at a young age, it doesn't guarantee you'll always say the right thing. After elementary school, I switched to a private school where grammar and spelling were emphasized, and the English teachers pretty much ruled the school. We spent a lot of time conjugating verbs, memorizing and reciting pronouns, and diagramming sentences. Nominative and objective cases were described in sixth grade- I nearly failed English until we hired me a tutor (an alum from the school) who brought me up to speed. Latin was also mandatory in 8th grade, but I don't think any of us had much difficulty with it because some aspects of conjugation and declension were already familiar to us. But you know what? I still don't speak in a completely grammatically correct way. An occasional "me and her" instead of a "she and I" slips through, and I regularly abuse the subjunctive.
posted by Mouse Army at 11:33 AM on September 14 [1 favorite]

> It's funny how, on the one hand, there's no such thing as "correct" English grammar because language is a social construction in which popular usage rules the day, and yet the supposedly pedantic (mis)education to which the notion of "proper" grammar is generally attributed is, itself, described as a social convention so widespread that "almost everyone" is affected by it. Wouldn't that make the pedantic approach to English grammar correct, as well?

No, it wouldn't. It's funny how not knowing the first thing about a subject can make it so much easier to snark about it.
posted by languagehat at 11:35 AM on September 14 [4 favorites]

For a while, up here in Toronto, English spelling and grammar were not taught to children until the 3rd or 4th grade. By that time, for those in the French immersion course, French grammar, spelling and punctuation were OK, but the English was horrible. At the same time, the school boards killed off phonetic pronounciation as a means of learning English spelling. It was a disaster. They're back to teaching the old way, but the students who were in grade school 20 years ago suffered. Did the US try the same experiment?
posted by x46 at 11:54 AM on September 14

Speaking purely for myself--someone who says things like "Me and her went shopping" all the time--it's because I simply don't give a fuck, and if any of my friends do, they nicely don't tell me so.
posted by Skot at 12:05 PM on September 14

x46:

I was taught the "Phonics" method in grade school but I went to a private institution. I'm not sure if this is what was taught in public schools in Georgia at the time (I'm thinking not). I can't say for sure if this is why my grammar skills are apparently better than average, or if it comes from something else (being somewhat of a perfectionist, paying attention when I read books, etc).
posted by bengarland at 12:07 PM on September 14

Language is made to convey meaning. If you understand the meaning, it doesn't matter how it is communicated. Focusing on form rather than function is missing the forest for the trees.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:15 PM on September 14

As another followup:

Personally, I don't see the difference between saying "Me and her went shopping." and "He went shopping with she and I." -- to me they are both glaringly wrong wrong wrong, yet I almost never hear anyone use the second type of construct.

How did things like "me and her" at the beginning of a sentence come to sound correct to some people, but other equally egregious mistakes like "she and I" at the end of a sentence did not?
posted by bengarland at 12:16 PM on September 14

For OP on your follow-up...

The movie / television script convention for cops (and firemen), as opposed to doctors and lawyers, is that they are not as a rule educated, and are instead blue collar guys or gals, who take extraordinary risk and in exchange are granted some of the privilege and prestige that ordinarily accrues only to white collar folk (like doctors and lawyers). Grammar and syntax are a great shorthand to convey this -- not only non-standard grammar and unsophisticated diction, but conspicuous exceptions thereto. ("NYPD Blue"'s cop dialog was famous for this, with cops only tying a bow on their high-school educations when they used big words.)

This "natural" tension between a cop's high power and responsibility, and modest origins / education, and the uncertain / liminal social status that results, is a constant trope, and often a central theme, of both comedy and drama involving cops.
posted by MattD at 12:31 PM on September 14

How did things like "me and her" at the beginning of a sentence come to sound correct to some people, but other equally egregious mistakes like "she and I" at the end of a sentence did not?

Well, probably they didn't "come to sound correct". Rather, it is much more likely that the judgments were like they are now, one sounding good and one bad, and someone made up a prescriptive rule that tried to also rule out the good one.
posted by advil at 12:42 PM on September 14

blue_beetle wrote: "Language is made to convey meaning. If you understand the meaning, it doesn't matter how it is communicated. Focusing on form rather than function is missing the forest for the trees."

As rokusan pointed out above, form is function, in the sense that it, too, conveys meaning. So regardless of straw-man issues of "correctness," some uses of language are more effective than others thanks to their form, rather than their function. See, for example, poetry.
posted by obliquicity at 2:25 PM on September 14

How did things like "me and her" at the beginning of a sentence come to sound correct to some people, but other equally egregious mistakes like "she and I" at the end of a sentence did not?

Because our nominative case pronouns (subject case) are marked: they show up only in subject position. Our objective case show up in lots of places -- as objects, as indirect objects, as objects of prepositions, pretty much anywhere that doesn't specifically take the nominative (or possessive/genitive, which doesn't get confused in the same way). Pretty much you put the objective case pronouns wherever it's not specifically some other case, so people put me/him/her etc anywhere a pronoun can go unless they are sure it should be I/he/she.

The use of "they gave it to Sam and I" is hypercorrection, when people know that "Sam and me" is inappropriate *somewhere*, but they don't really get where, so they use it randomly.
posted by jeather at 3:28 PM on September 14 [1 favorite]

Jeather gave a pretty good answer to the actual question being asked.

There are a lot of ideological overstatements in this thread, and many of them have very little to do with the question being asked.

One of the most common exaggerations is that the only thing that matters is whether one's intended meaning is understood. Uh, sorry, but no. Assuming you have a particular thought you want to express, there are infinite different ways you could express it. Some of these ways are equally good, and it's just a matter of personal preference which of those you choose. But many possible ways of expressing the thought will be flawed, and the best advice would obviously be to avoid these flaws. The fact that many people cringe upon hearing that "Me and Sarah are going shopping" is a real problem with that way of phrasing it, and it's a good reason to prefer "Sarah and I are going shopping." Of course, it's a free country, so you have the right to say whatever you want -- and if you're understood despite the errors, then good for you. But anyone who aspires only to be understood is setting the bar much too low. Indeed, most commenters who are criticizing "prescriptivism" in this very thread actually put this principle into practice by writing much better than they would need to in order to have their meaning understood. If they're staying true to their principle that practice matters more than theory, they should admit that grammatical rules matter.
posted by Jaltcoh at 6:38 PM on September 14

I'll second hypercorrection for the answer to question 1. That is the only polite excuse I can come up with to explain the name of a business near where I live: Mom and I's Candy.

I want to throw a brick through that window every time I drive by.
posted by bryon at 8:00 PM on September 14

It's funny how not knowing the first thing about a subject can make it so much easier to snark about it.

Seems to me onshi's comment concerns reasoning, not linguistics.
posted by galaksit at 8:27 PM on September 14

So they say, instead, "just between you and myself." Drowning is too good for whoever taught them that.

The hypercorrection with "myself" in particular has really gained prominence lately (along with, less often, "yourself"). I hear people use this in interviews and such all the time (particularly in the sports and news shows I often watch and listen to). "The bill was proposed by Senator Smith and myself." "This team made some great off-season additions, especially with Tom, Dick, and myself." And with mass media the way it is, it can only catch on and get even worse. At least, that's the opinion of myself.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 10:30 PM on September 14

Mom and I's Candy.

I want to throw a brick through that window every time I drive by.

In fairness, I'm not sure what would make for a better name. Mom's and My Candy? My Mom and I's Candy? Mom and Me Candy?

At least it's not "Mom and I's Candy's." I'd donate a brick if that were the case.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 10:34 PM on September 14

> The use of "they gave it to Sam and I" is hypercorrection, when people know that "Sam and me" is inappropriate *somewhere*, but they don't really get where, so they use it randomly.

That's actually not true. I used to think that myself, but it's really much more complicated, as is pretty much everything having to do with pronouns in English.

> Seems to me onshi's comment concerns reasoning, not linguistics.

Here, let me give you an analogy: "It stands to reason that the sun goes around the earth. Look over there in the east, the sun is rising. It goes across the sky and then sets in the west. QED." Perfectly reasonable, completely wrong. You have to have basic facts before you can reason about them, and virtually everyone who hasn't taken a linguistics class is in the position of pre-Copernicans trying to reason about astronomy.
posted by languagehat at 6:50 AM on September 15

One of the most common exaggerations is that the only thing that matters is whether one's intended meaning is understood.

Agreed, people on these linguistics threads get carried away with this. I picture them wearing Che Guevara T-Shirts except Che is holding a flaming copy of Webster's 3rd in each hand and he's pitching them through the windows of the edifice of state.

I mean Reductio ad absurdum style: "n f th mst cmmn xggrtns s tht th nly thng tht mttrsis whthr n's ntndd mnng s ndrstd". Clearly, most of us can still understand that, but I don't think anyone would argue that that's still English as she is spoke.
posted by jeb at 7:19 AM on September 15

Just came here to say that game warden to the events rhino said it perfectly.

Now I have to memorize his phrasing for future use...
posted by IAmBroom at 1:41 PM on September 15

You have to have basic facts before you can reason about them, and virtually everyone who hasn't taken a linguistics class is in the position of pre-Copernicans trying to reason about astronomy.

The poster was surely talking about how lay people should evaluate competing claims about "correctness" not only from linguists but from the people who as you put it teach "bullshit". I think by its very nature that is a debate which belongs not only to specialists but to all speakers, who, if they ever think about it, have to pick a side based on what they consider practical in their lives.
posted by galaksit at 8:34 AM on September 16

I think by its very nature that is a debate which belongs not only to specialists but to all speakers, who, if they ever think about it, have to pick a side based on what they consider practical in their lives.

I think this is exactly why languagehat is suggesting that people ideally should take linguistics classes before making some kind of decision -- so they have some remotely factual/informational basis that they can use to "pick a side". Prescriptive claims resonate with people for all sorts of reasons unrelated to their content, whereas descriptive claims tend to be (like most scientific claims) dry, complicated, and not nearly as easy to approach without some minimal amount of education. But sadly, I don't think we'll ever see the day when high school English classes everywhere teach a bit of linguistics. But at least pick up "the language instinct" or something. Just because a debate might belong to everyone doesn't mean that participating in the debate without adequate knowledge is going to accomplish anything.
posted by advil at 9:05 AM on September 16 [2 favorites]

Also, "the only thing that matters is whether one's intended meaning is understood" is an absurd characterization of this position, and you won't find any linguists that believe this. There are many many understandable strings of English words (for instance) that are not grammatical and this is an elementary kind of thing that a theory of language needs to explain. One of Chomsky's earliest examples (from Syntactic Structures) is the perfectly understandable but terrible-sounding "the child seems sleeping" (in contrast to "the book seems interesting").

In cases like (part of) the one in this post, where a prescriptive rule conflicts with what native speakers find acceptable and understandable, the point is that there is no motivation for the prescriptive rule on mutual intelligibility. (Which is a common motivator for such rules, though most of the cases break down when you look at them.)
posted by advil at 9:46 AM on September 16

I think this is exactly why languagehat is suggesting that people ideally should take linguistics classes before making some kind of decision -- so they have some remotely factual/informational basis that they can use to "pick a side".

I wouldn't (couldn't, even) argue against that, but my point about practicality is why I defended the original remark. Linguistics may have some greater claim to being the truth, but that doesn't stop it being practical -- even wisest -- to follow the prescriptive line in many circumstances. In those circumstances, you may as well say it is "correct" to do so.
posted by galaksit at 11:45 AM on September 16

Yeah, it was practical -- even wisest -- for Galileo to submit to church teachings he knew were wrong. Is that our standard?

Also, it's not hypercorrection.
posted by languagehat at 11:55 AM on September 18

Well, I often say "us" when I mean "me" -- but I didn't in my exams, and I wouldn't in a job application. I don't think that threatens the legacy of the Enlightenment, but we obviously differ on this.
posted by galaksit at 1:30 PM on September 22