# Me and her went to the pub.



## anothersmith

There seems to be a difference in the colloquial use of pronouns in the U.K. vs. the U.S.  I remember it coming up in another thread in which a number of people from the U.K. said it's common and unremarkable in BE to say "me and her went to the pub" (or maybe it's "her and I went to the pub").

I mean no offense whatsoever to BE speakers when I say this, but I just wanted to point out that it's not as common in the U.S. and when most of us (or at least most of the type of us who love the language) hear it, it sounds like the speaker didn't receive a very good education.  That's just because it hasn't become as commonplace here as in the U.K.  No aspersions cast on our friends across the pond.  It just has a very different register here.


----------



## panjandrum

I moved this topic from another thread, where it was somewhat relevant, to this thread all of its own 
This particular usage has become very common in spoken BE and seems to be used in casual conversation by all kinds of people.


----------



## Lexiphile

anothersmith said:


> I mean no offense whatsoever to BE speakers when I say this, but I just wanted to point out that it's not as common in the U.S. and when most of us (or at least most of the type of us who love the language) hear it, it sounds like the speaker didn't receive a very good education. That's just because it hasn't become as commonplace here as in the U.K. No aspersions cast on our friends across the pond. It just has a very different register here.


 
You may rest assured, anothersmith, that among those in the UK who love the language, this form is NOT used. Its use is, however, quite widespread in the UK. Language "errors" (I have to put that in quotation marks, otherwise a hundred and one foreros will come down on my head) do tend to be "national" in that the questionable usages common in the US are not the same as the questionable usages found in the UK. You needn't be concerned about casting aspersions -- every land has its share of hideous verbal constructions, at least when viewed from another land.


----------



## Loob

I would argue that "me and her went to the pub" is still non-standard.

Put another way, I don't say it


----------



## ewie

I thought that was very nicely put, Another. If we could all learn to be a bit more tolerant of the differing varieties of English, both _inter_- and _intra-national_, not only would we (as human beings) get on better, but there would be no need for the seeming endless threads on here which follow the *We*-Say-Yes-But-*We*-Say pattern.
I wholeheartedly back up what you and Panjandrum say, that this practice is very widespread in the UK, is becoming ever more so, and, at the risk of scandalizing the prescriptivists*, is gaining in acceptability.
In days gone by one very often heard people stumbling and questioning themselves when using this kind of phrase ~
_"Yesterday me and your mother went to the pub ~ or do I mean 'your mother and I'?"_
I hear this self-correction less and less often these days, and warmly welcome the change, along with _all_ changes engendered by our more relaxed attitude to language, our ever-growing rejection of prescriptivism.

*In fact, I'm _not at all_ worried about offending prescriptivists ~ I would far rather offend a thousand prescriptivists by hinting that their Laws and Diktats are bollocks, than offend one American by implying that his usage of (e.g.) _gotten _is 'antiquated', 'erroneous', 'quaint', 'wrong' ... or _anything_ other than 'American English'.


----------



## Lexiphile

It is interesting, though, that no one in the UK, even in such obscure places as "up north," says "Me went to the pub" or "Her went to the pub."  It's only in the combined form that the masses are slipping into the object-case.  I suspect that the self-questioning that Ewie notes resulted from a deeply rooted feeling that if one of the pronouns were used alone, it would be nominative.  As the population ages, there are fewer people around who have such deeply rooted feelings about anything grammatical, since they were never taught grammar.

Thanks to Ewie, we now have an example of an American usage that is seen by many in the UK as a hideous "error."  Gotten is rotten!


----------



## ewie

Yes, indeedy, it's only in cases where a noun and a pronoun or two pronouns are joined with an _and_ that it seems to happen.
Perhaps someone (less lazy than me _[or I]_) would like to research the age of this usage ~ I suspect [based on no evidence whatsoever other than gut feeling] ~ that it's one of those things that's been around since the days of Old English, like that perennial favourite the so-called split infinitive _[sound of teeth grinding against bare concrete floor]_ ...

Incidentally, I like _gotten_: I wish we had two past participles for the verb _get ~_ the distinction it makes between (for example) _I have got rabies _and _I have gotten rabies_ always strikes me as a useful one.


----------



## anothersmith

I like "gotten" only in the phrase "ill-gotten gains."


----------



## panjandrum

Incidentally, an early reminder to keep to the thread topic.  If got and gotten, split infinitives or indeed terminal prepositions are your special interest, there are other threads for you. 
In a probably pointless effort to keep this thread on the original topic, here is some reading material for got/gotten enthusiasts.

I wonder if it is possible to find where "Me and her went ..." came from.
Is it ancient usage?
... colloquial/dialect somewhere?
Is there any explanation for its increasing use over the last forty years (I've been studying the phenomenon and this is a personal view)?
Is "Me and her ..." more common than "Her and me ..."?


----------



## cuchuflete

panjandrum said:


> I
> 
> [1] I wonder if it is possible to find where "Me and her went ..." came from.
> [2] Is it ancient usage?
> [3] ... colloquial/dialect somewhere?
> [4] Is there any explanation for its increasing use over the last forty years (I've been studying the phenomenon and this is a personal view)?
> [5] Is "Me and her ..." more common than "Her and me ..."?



Observations from an underpopulated corner of the English speaking world:

Me and her +  _past tense verb _is fairly common in colloquial speech.
She and I + _past tense verb _is fairly common in colloquial speech.

Looking at the screen, I notice–for the first time–the inversion of the genders of the pronouns. That's if the writer is male.  I have no idea if this results from anything but euphony.  I doubt it.  A  masculinist or feminist prescriptivist may have further thoughts on this when they take a pause from habitual fulminations.  (Do they ever take a pause?) 

I'm of the 'she and I' school, out of habit and the comfort of acting in accord with my context.  I notice 'me and her', but don't get especially rattled by it.  It's usually in keeping with the overall usage pattern of the speaker, and it's easily understood. She-and-I'ers and me-and-her'ers can carry on a pleasant conversation, understanding one another without need to correct.  

To Panj's questions:
1. Don't know; 
2. Don't know; 
3. Colloquial around here (here is the far northeastern U.S., but I have found 'me and her' common in colloquial conversation in much of the U.S.); 
4. I'm not aware of an increase or decrease over the last forty years; 
5. Yes!


----------



## sdgraham

panjandrum said:


> Is there any explanation for its increasing use over the last forty years (I've been studying the phenomenon and this is a personal view)



Panj

Educators are like architects, as a class they should not be allowed to run amok without a few level-headed minders in attendance - with cudgels in hand to keep offenders on the straight and narrow.

My wife, a retired educator (one of the good ones) tells me that 20 or so years ago, "educators" decided that students should not be burdened with correct English because it might inhibit their creative expression.

The result is that the speech of many so-called educated people in the U.S. is indistinguishable from that of grade-school dropouts.

My sister-in-law, who teaches German at a small Western college, told me yesterday that the greatest problem today's students have is learning grammatical concepts that we old codgers learned in elementary school.


----------



## Lexiphile

And SdGraham's explanation applies pretty well word-for-word to the UK as well.


----------



## regins7487

To say "me and her went to the pub" is very common among young people in the UK - that's certainly what I'd say anyway and I don't think I know anyone my age who would say "she and I". Could it maybe just be an age thing, rather than a question of education?


----------



## Lexiphile

Well, regins, I think you're very courageous, in this company, to admit that, but...
yes and no!  Yes it is an age thing, since anyone under the age of 30 has probably not had the grammatical training (and correction!!) to recognise the problem.  But it is still a part of (missing) education, so "no" as well.  That doesn't imply that you are "uneducated," but it does mean that your education was not concerned with grammar.


----------



## se16teddy

The Oxford English Dictionary's first example of _me '_forming with another pronoun or a noun the subject of a plural verb' is from 1379: _Me and myn ayres _[_Me and my heirs_, I suppose]._..haue releissit..al my rycht clayme persuit chalenge or askyng..to fourty markis worth of land. _

Three hundred years later, it occurred to someone that this characteristic of English should be considered incorrect, presumably because Latin does not have the same rule. The Dictionary comments that such forms _have been regarded as non-standard by many grammarians since the 18th cent_. 

Personally, I don't agree with the idea that because Latin does not have a form like _Me and her went to the pub, _English shouldn't either. Of course, this doesn't stop me cravenly pandering to people's prejudices and saying _She and I went to the pub _when I think that this form of words will put money in my pocket.


----------



## ewie

se16teddy said:


> The Oxford English Dictionary's first example of _me 'f_orming with another pronoun or a noun the subject of a plural verb' is from 1379: _Me and myn ayres..haue releissit..al my rycht clayme persuit chalenge or askyng..to fourty markis worth of land. _
> 
> Three hundred years later, it occurred to someone that this characteristic of English was incorrect because Latin did not do the same. The Dictionary comments have been regarded as non-standard by many grammarians since the 18th cent.


 
*Put briefly: Bingo!*



Lexiphile said:


> You may rest assured, anothersmith, that among those in the UK who love the language, this form is NOT used.


Please rest assured, Lexi, that I _love_ English ~ in all its 'richness and variety', i.e. the bad as well as the good.  And I say _me and her_ ALL THE TIME**



Lexiphile said:


> And SdGraham's explanation applies pretty well word-for-word to the UK as well.


Agree, agree, Lexi (_this_ time ~ don't get used to it).  And the problem is that The Yoof Of Today, as SDG says, seem increasingly to know no alternative to their own version of English, whatever it might be (Valley Speak, Home Counties Pseudo-Black English, etc.)  I am by no means an advocate of the Educationalist Industry ~ they often seem even more deluded than the Prescriptivists.  And I sometimes wonder if there was ~ however briefly ~ a period in which the middle course was taken: yeah, kids, _your_ English is a valid version of English, but you need to know that it is not valid to everyone.



regins7487 said:


> Could it maybe just be an age thing, rather than a question of education?


I don't think so, Regins.  As I said above, I say it ALL THE TIME.  (I'm pushing 44).  It's what I grew up surrounded by ~ _despite_ having gone to an expensive school, _despite_ my parents being as middle-class as they get, _despite_ a lifetime of actually listening to what people say (I mean to the words they use and so on) and so being exposed to the _she and I_ version from time to time ... I find myself, to all intents and purposes, incapable of physically saying _she and I_.

_Ooer, calm down, ewie._


----------



## JazzByChas

Well...as for the use of "me and ___ + <past participle> ..." being slang and used in everyday speech, I am sure this is the case, on either side of the AE/BE pond.

And, I am equally as sure that "She and I <past participle> ..." would be, at least, what one was taught as proper English (on both sides of the pond)

The test my teachers always told me to use was this: can you say,

" 'Me went to the pub' or 'Her went to the pub.' ? "

Although some people may speak this way, I was always taught that "Me" and "Her" are object pronouns, and as such, aren't used as subjects, whereas "I" and "She" are...


----------



## Lexiphile

"Ooer"?? Good grief, Ewie, you really are from Manchester, aren't you! 

But back to the thread....
Teddy, The problem with the OED (for which I have, by the way, a great deal of respect) is that it was created by a vast number of people searching out printed references to words, the older the better. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing whether the usages found were common, accepted at the time, or even written with any intention of being "correct." They're just printed usages. And is there any reason for us to use constructions that were current in the fourteenth century? We can hardly understand the sentence quoted, so why should the grammar concern us?

Over the years, and particularly in the eighteenth century, great efforts were made to codify English as it was spoken (generally with reference to Latin grammar). Those are the only grammatical rules we have, so the question "should English conform to Latin grammar," is irrelevant. English rules are English rules -- that they were based on Latin is not the point. And the rule in English is that the subject of a clause is to be expressed in the nominative case. 

But Ewie, despite his northern roots (which, by the way, I share, but that won't save me from his rath ), probably has a good point there: in the past, people of all ages knew when they were committing a no-no. That is no longer the case.


----------



## LV4-26

You guys might be interested to know that, in French,  the object form would be used.
The  correct equivalent French sentence would be transliterated as
_Him* and me, we went to the pub._
(*I changed the gender because _she_ and  _her_ have the same form in French).


----------



## sdgraham

Lexiphile said:


> Yes it is an age thing, since anyone under the age of 30 has probably not had the grammatical training (and correction!!) to recognise the problem.  But it is still a part of (missing) education, so "no" as well.  That doesn't imply that you are "uneducated," but it does mean that your education was not concerned with grammar.



Moreover, the ranks of the teaching profession now seem to be populated by the victims of the "anything goes" educational philosophy and there are pitifully few who are there to revive what is becoming a dead language.

While language can and must change, I see no justification for accepting illogical changes and grammatical anarchy.

As JazzByChas points out , one would not say "her had a headache so me went to the pub alone," so why say "me and her went to the pub?""


----------



## ewie

JazzByChas said:


> The test my teachers always told me to use was this: can you say,
> 
> " 'Me went to the pub' or 'Her went to the pub.' ? "
> *That's how I learnt it too, Jazz. I must admit that I can't quite remember, in my current state, whether I learnt it at primary school (1960s, England) or whether it was just drummed into me by my mother who learnt it in her childhood (1930s/40s, Scotland).*
> *And yet, despite this as well ... [see above]*


 


Lexiphile said:


> "Ooer"?? Good grief, Ewie, you really are from Manchester, aren't you!
> *I'm actually from Burnley, Lex*
> *...*
> And is there any reason for us to use constructions that were current in the fourteenth century?
> *Bit off-topic, but why not? ~ we use plenty of others that were current before then. More seriously: I don't think anyone's saying we should use me and her over she and I. I'm not.*
> 
> We can hardly understand the sentence quoted
> *Speak for yourself, luv.*
> 
> *...*
> the question "should English conform to Latin grammar," is irrelevant. English rules are English rules -- that they were based on Latin is not the point.
> *Disagree again, Lex (told you not to get used to it). I believe this 'Latinism' will remain germane to the whole of English linguistics until the last Latinist prescriptivizer's mush has finally been ground into the mud  we at long last come to accept that English has laws entirely of and unto itself [sorry, I've lost my thread now]*
> 
> *...*
> But Ewie, despite his northern roots (which, by the way, I share, but that won't save me from his rath ),
> *despite my wrath, I'm prepared to forgive you anything, Lex.*


 


LV4-26 said:


> The correct equivalent French sentence would be transliterated as
> _Him* and me, we went to the pub._


*Excellent point, LV4. This reminds me of the concept of 'underlying grammar' (which, I admit, I've never fully gotten to grips with).*
*Him and me, me and him, he and I, I and him, I and he ...*



sdgraham said:


> While language can and must change, I see no justification for accepting illogical changes. and grammatical anarchy.
> *I now feel unacceptable. And anarchic. Still, I am at least far from alone.*


----------



## JazzByChas

This is true, but in French, the idea is, 

"[Concerning/In regards to] him and me, we went to the pub"


> Originally Posted by *LV4-26*
> 
> 
> The correct equivalent French sentence would be transliterated as
> _Him* and me, we went to the pub._


----------



## Brioche

LV4-26 said:


> You guys might be interested to know that, in French,  the object form would be used.
> The  correct equivalent French sentence would be transliterated as
> _Him* and me, we went to the pub._
> (*I changed the gender because _she_ and  _her_ have the same form in French).



That is not correct.
French has _stressed_ or disjunctive forms for pronouns.

In French you can say je _ + verb, or elle [she] + verb, or il [he] + verb, but you cannot say je et elle + verb, or je et il + verb. 
With a double subject [either two pronouns or pronoun + noun] you need the stressed forms "moi" instead of je, and "lui" instead of il.
French stressed pronouns are the same whether subject or object.

There is a tendency in English to use the object forms me, him, her, them disjunctively. 
Who wants another piece of cake?   Me!

Pronoun confusion is very frequent in English
No-one says Me went to the pub but
Me and Mary went to the pub is very common, 
Similarly, no-one says Bill took I to the pub,
but you'll hear 
Bill took Mary and I to the pub, 
and even ridiculous group possessives such as
Bill is a friend of Mary and I's._


----------



## panjandrum

I don't think I am bending the topic much by introducing "Me and Andrew went to the pub."
This variant, perhaps more often than the "Me and her..." version, is used as a matter of routine by a number of very well educated, and indeed very highly-paid, 30-somethings of my acquaintance.

I should add that none of them would dream of saying "Me went ...".

"Me and Angie went ..." "Me and Brian are going ..." seem to be used by people who otherwise use very good English and would never dream of writing like this.


----------



## JazzByChas

_Maybe, but typically among younger people or children.  I would say, "I would [like another piece of cake]!"_
_


			
				Brioche said:
			
		


Who wants another piece of cake? Me!

Click to expand...

_


----------



## Phil-Olly

So how do these "illogical" usages creep into the language?  Children have an innate sense of the rational of a language and quickly pick up that, for example, past tenses in English are formed by adding '-ed'.  Later they have to learn that certain verbs don't follow this rule which they themselves have deduced.

By the same token, the use of "I" and "she" as the subject, and "me" and "her" as the object is almost intuitive - we don't need to be "taught" this rule.

Is it the case that rule-breaking forms like "her and me" as the subject get coined by a few individuals, and then spread by those who wish to be viewed as members of their peer group?


----------



## ewie

Brioche said:


> French has _stressed_ or disjunctive forms for pronouns.
> There is a tendency in English to use the object forms_ me, him, her, them_ disjunctively.
> *I'd go a step further and (dare to) suggest that me, him, her etc. are in a way 'disjunctive' pronouns. Look at it this way: in Old English verbs 'declined' in number and tense, the way French verbs still do (allons etc.) So where we in Modern English say we went [= we did-go], our ancestors would have said the equivalent of [did-go-we]. I wish I could remember what I set out to say...*
> *Something like this: me and her is sort-of an answer to the unposed question Who did-go-we? This isn't coming out very clearly, is it? I know what I mean, I just can't get it into words.*
> 
> and even ridiculous group possessives such as
> _Bill is a friend of Mary and I's_.
> *... which sounds to me very much like hyper-self-correction.*
> *I wonder, Brioche, whereabouts on the scale of ridiculousness does Bill is a friend of me and Mary lie?  And how about Bill is a friend of mine and Mary's?*


 


panjandrum said:


> I don't think I am bending the topic much by introducing "Me and Andrew went to the pub."
> *...*
> "Me and Angie went ..." "Me and Brian are going ..." seem to be used by people who otherwise use very good English and would never dream of writing like this.


*Do you, Panjandrum, feel, deep in your water, that me and Andrew is so very different a construction from me and him? *


----------



## panjandrum

ewie said:


> *Do you, Panjandrum, feel, deep in your water, that me and Andrew is so very different a construction from me and him? *


I do.
Well, I don't feel it is a radically different construction, but I do feel that they have different sets of users.

I suggest that the _me and Andrew_ construction in some way,reflects the familliar confusion, aired in many threads (in some context, should I say _me and Andrew, Andrew and me, I and Andrew, Andrew and I_) that has in part been created by generations of insistence on _Andrew and I, not Andrew and me_.  It involves only the first person pronouns.

The _me and her_ construction is a step further away from the norm.

Next step is _me and her is going to the pub_ 

This is not a scientific analysis.


----------



## LV4-26

panjandrum said:


> Well, I don't feel it is a radically different construction, but I do feel that they have different sets of users.


I'm not sure I would call them "different" sets of users, as I suspect those who say "_me and her_" would also say "_me and Andrew"._
(but I'll grant you that the reverse is not true).
I think there may be a logical reason for "_me and Andrew_" to be more widespread.
 You don't have that many opportunities to say such things as "_me and her_" or "_me and him"_.
If you use a personal pronoun (_him_), that means you and everyone around know whom you're referring to. In that case, a "_we_" seems much more natural and simpler to use.
_We (both) went to the pub / The two of us went to the pub._

Therefore, you're much more likely to use "_me and Andrew_" than "_me and him_", just because the situation presents itself more often.

For "_me_" (or _"I"_) there's no alternative... except if I'm some sort of megalomaniac, I will never say
_Jean-Michel and Andrew went to the pub._


----------



## Lexiphile

se16teddy said:


> The Oxford English Dictionary's first example of _me '_forming with another pronoun or a noun the subject of a plural verb' is from 1379: _Me and myn ayres _[_Me and my heirs_, I suppose]._..haue releissit..al my rycht clayme persuit chalenge or askyng..to fourty markis worth of land. _


 
In view of this and of LV4's further consideration of the alternate use of "we," one wonders whether the first English-speaking Kings and Queens of England, well known for their use of the "royal we", would have said "Us and her went to the pub."


----------



## ewie

Lexiphile said:


> In view of this and of LV4's further consideration of the alternate use of "we," one wonders whether the first English-speaking Kings and Queens of England, well known for their use of the "royal we", would have said "Us and her went to the pub."


 

Oh, I'm sure they did, Lexi.  And I have it on good authority that the present incumbent has been heard to say _Me and Phil's orff to Belmoral for t'weekend._


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

In colloquial language, I'd never say she and I went... it'd always be _me and her..... _I think most Irish are the same.


----------



## cirrus

The problem is that prescriptivists sound a little like they are saying: What I say is right and anyone who says differently is pig ignorant and I blame it all on perm any or all of the following: 
the 60s fifth column  
hippies
socialism
uppity social inferiors
I'm sure we could add others

The question is far wider than me and him. Just go to the English South West.  "Her be coming" is not an unusual construction in spoken language there.


----------



## ewie

cirrus said:


> The problem is that prescriptivists sound a little like they are saying: What I say is right and anyone who says differently is pig ignorant and I blame it all on *perm* any or all of the following:
> *???*
> 
> The question is far wider than me and him. Just go to the English South West. "Her be coming" is not an unusual construction in spoken language there.


 
And, it could be argued, _her be coming_ (or Northern _I were going_, or other similar variations) are no less 'illogical' ~ to borrow a favourite prescriptivist term ~ than _she is coming, I was going_, etc.
It's only linguistic convention, stiffened up with a good dollop of prescriptivism, which determines that _she_ be followed by _is_, _I_ by _was_, and so on. There is nothing which intrinsically differentiates _is_ from _be_: _is _is just _be_ with a funny hat on. [Tying myself up in philosophical knots here]. Similarly, _she_ and _her_ are, deep down, exactly the same thing: they're just different aspects of _'she/her-ness'_ ~ it's just that we happen to have developed over the ages two distinct noises for the same thing. Some languages may only have the one noise; many languages have more than two; erm ... that's it for the moment.


----------



## regins7487

"in the past, people of all ages knew when they were committing a no-no. That is no longer the case"

I disagree. It's clear to me that its technically grammatically correct to say "she and I went to the pub" but I still wouldn't use it as to me and most people I know it would sound hideously pretentious. 

I think what's correct usage of language is all just completely relative to your own experience. I would say "me and her went to the pub" but never "I were going" for example as, like you re "me and her", my perception of it, from the background I come from, is that it sounds uneducated, although it may be perfectly acceptable to someone else.


----------



## Lexiphile

regins7487 said:


> I think what's correct usage of language is all just completely relative to your own experience. I would say "me and her went to the pub" but never "I were going" for example as, like you re "me and her", my perception of it, from the background I come from, is that it sounds uneducated, although it may be perfectly acceptable to someone else.


 
I'm sure Ewie and his merry band of anti-prescriptivists will come down on me like a ton of bricks, but I think this is a good example of the need for rules in language structure.

I would dearly like to answer the quoted paragraph, but I simply have no idea what it means.  It is composed in a language which may indeed be clear and acceptable to a large number of (probably young) people, but it communicates nothing to me except a vague feeling of objection to the grammatical standards of the past.  Is that an "age thing"?  I don't think so.  I don't think I have "forgotten" how to understand this.  It simply is not a form of expression that was current when I was growing up.  Through a certain lack of prescription, the "rules" have been changed so much that communication has fallen by the wayside.

And I don't even align myself with the prescriptivists, Ewie!


----------



## Brioche

regins7487 said:


> "in the past, people of all ages knew when they were committing a no-no. That is no longer the case"
> 
> I disagree. It's clear to me that its technically grammatically correct to say "she and I went to the pub" but I still wouldn't use it as to me and most people I know it would sound hideously pretentious.



I must move in extremely rarified circles!

Anyone I know who can correctly spell _technical_, _grammatical_ or _hideous_ and who understands what _pretentious_ means, would never say "Me and her went to the pub". 

It's possible that in answer to the question "Who went to the pub?" that they would say "Me and her."

Something like "About whom are you talking?" instead of "Who are you talking about?" _would_ sound pretentious.


----------



## regins7487

Lexi, I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean you don't understand the way I write? I am simply saying that, to you, "me and her went to the pub" sounds uneducated in the same way that, to me, "I were going" sounds uneducated. What is correct to a person is simply a reflection of what they're used to.


----------



## Lexiphile

Yes, Regins, I do understand your standpoint.  What I don't understand is the paragraph I quoted in post #39 -- or more specifically, the second sentence in it.

By the way, this is a long thread so I may have forgotton, but I don't believe I said anywhere that "me and her went" sounded uneducated.  In fact, I think I specifically said that its use did not necessarily mean that the speaker is uneducated.  The fact that you can use the word _pretentious_ (as Brioche points out) but still choose to say "me and her went," apparently for social rather than linguistic reasons, doesn't suggest a lack of education. 

But how can what is correct be "simply a reflection" of what a person is used to?  How far can we stretch that?  Is seems to me that, when that principle is applied, everyone is always correct.  No one can ever be incorrect, unless he is not "true unto himself."  The problem that then arises in the resulting free-for-all is that communication breaks down.  I cannot answer whatever point you were making in your second sentence above because I don't understand it.  You may rest assured that I, too, am not uneducated, so I should be able to understand it.

In English at least, grammatical rules weren't created because someone wanted to be bloody-minded and impose his will on the rest of us (in some languages, they were!).  They exist to codify the way we use words, so that when ten words are strung together, they form a coherent structure that can be identically interpreted by everyone.  If everyone interprets it differently, or not at all, there can be no communication.  With a short sentence like "me and her went to the pub," there is little chance for a misinterpretation.  But in a longer sentence (like yours above), there certainly is.

"Me and her went" is not a new construction, confined to young people.  It was around when I was in school and before.  But then it clearly was associated with a lack of education.  Only the uneducated spoke like that, and the uneducated still do.  It remains unclear why a group of educated people should choose among themselves conciously to adopt the errors of the past rather than follow the rules they know, since by doing so they isolate themselves from those who stick to the rules and align themselves instead with the uneducated.  Who benefits from that?

'nuff said, for now.


----------



## Phil-Olly

ewie said:


> It's only linguistic convention, stiffened up with a good dollop of prescriptivism, which determines that _she_ be followed by _is_, _I_ by _was_, and so on. There is nothing which intrinsically differentiates _is_ from _be_: _is _is just _be_ with a funny hat on. [Tying myself up in philosophical knots here]. Similarly, _she_ and _her_ are, deep down, exactly the same thing: they're just different aspects of _'she/her-ness'_ ~ it's just that we happen to have developed over the ages two distinct noises for the same thing. Some languages may only have the one noise; many languages have more than two; erm ... that's it for the moment.



Me am confused.  When I seen this forum, I figured all yous guy's are about showing us how English supposed to be spoke and wrote.  Now I've just saw what Ewie's wrote and him say that all they rule's is just made up.  So I don't got to bother no more.  Right?  If only I'd have known that before!


----------



## JazzByChas

Hmm...I would disagree...pretentious, to me, anyway, means "putting on airs."  Speaking correctly, to me, just means that you know what the rules of grammar are, and you use them.  I would also say that just because most people (especially younger ones) who consistently use bad grammar are not excused from the rules...they just ignore them...



> It's clear to me that its technically grammatically correct to say "she and I went to the pub" but I still wouldn't use it as to me and most people I know it would sound hideously pretentious.


----------



## cuchuflete

Mod note:  This is all interesting.  That includes the off-topic conversations about
prescriptivism and the merits of 'free-form' usage.  Still, we need to direct most of
our attention to the thread topic.  To make that easier, I'll copy it here:




> There seems to be a difference in the *colloquial use *of pronouns in the U.K. vs. the U.S. I remember it coming up in another thread in which a number of people from the U.K. said it's common and unremarkable in BE to say "me and her went to the pub" (or maybe it's "her and I went to the pub").
> 
> I mean no offense whatsoever to BE speakers when I say this, but I just wanted to point out that it's not as common in the U.S. and when most of us (or at least most of the type of us who love the language) hear it, it sounds like the speaker didn't receive a very good education. That's just because it hasn't become as commonplace here as in the U.K. No aspersions cast on our friends across the pond. *It just has a very different register here.*


 *emphasis added


*It appears that the thread starter (involuntary, as the post was split from another conversation) focused on *register in colloquial use*, and not whether something is "correct" or "incorrect".


----------



## regins7487

I take your point but I don't consider Prescriptivism to be a particularly good argument either since it is natural for languages to change and for some things that were considered "incorrect" in the past to become "correct". Obviously we need rules to be able to communicate but I think you'd agree that even if you personally wouldn't say "me and her went to the pub" it's clear what the meaning is. 

Anyway, I stand down. I think it's quite obvious we're not going to agree


----------



## ewie

cuchuflete said:


> It appears that the thread starter (involuntary, as the post was split from another conversation) focused on *register in colloquial use*, and not whether something is "correct" or "incorrect".


 
Note to mod (with respect): It rather depends where one adds one's emphasis. I was more interested in these parts [in green] (I was just _building up_ to them):



anothersmith said:


> I mean no offense whatsoever to BE speakers when I say this, but I just wanted to point out that it's not as common in the U.S. and when most of us (or at least most of *the type of us who love the language*) hear it, *it sounds like the speaker didn't receive a very good education*.


 
As I said in posts #17 and #22 (and in another thread which was going along similar lines at the same time, I forget which it was): I _love_ English, and I've received a very good education (not that I've ever done much with it, by the by), and yet I _still_ persist in saying _me and her went boozing, _and would use it in all situations with the possible exception of writing to the OED*.
Generally, though, I agree with Regins: we will _never_ agree on this: I will forever be accused of 'grammatical anarchy' at best, 'English-hating' at worst; I in turn will continue to be exasperated by the prescriptivists' bloodthirsty intolerance of the usage of _millions_ of people.

_(*Not sure_ _why_ _I'd be writing to the OED about my boozing activities, mind.)_


----------



## panjandrum

I don't think I'm likely to be accused of bloodthirsty prescriptivism - at least, not with sufficient evidence for a conviction.
But in my world, it is still true that the topic sentence will create an unfavourable impression.  If you don't mind that, it's OK with me, but you can't prevent the impression being created.

Similarly, those of my acquaintance who habitually talk about me and Andrew, me and Angie, going to the pub would never dream of writing that in a formal report or saying it in court.


----------



## Lexiphile

Ah.... the thread called Lazarus!
I expect that I will (now) be forever accused of bloodthirsty intolerance at best and possibly even hideous pretentiousness as well.  But never mind.

Panj's point is most instructive:  Anothersmith's suggestion that "*it sounds like the speaker didn't receive a very good education**"* will remain true, at least among those who don't speak this way, regardless of the actual level of education of the speaker.  Ewie's "millions" will, for example, find it an uphill struggle to be offered a job by anyone in the "She and I" Brigade even if they are perfectly suited to the position on offer.  This situation will prevail until the "me and hersers" have taken over the majority of the job-offering roles.


----------



## Loob

Can I please, in a not-very-small voice, mention the word "CONTEXT*"*?

Every single one of us uses language differently depending on the situation, the people we're with, our objectives, the way we're trying to portray ourselves and so on.

It's clear that in the contexts ewie and regins7487 use "me and her went" they do so because it's appropriate - because "she and I went" would strike a false note.

With friends I say things I wouldn't dream of saying in a job interview.  And vice versa.

As to the BrE/AmE point, it's not at all suprising that patterns of appropriateness should differ, particularly in colloquial speech.  Both varieties routinely use expressions which raise hackles/laughter/incomprehension in the other variety.


----------



## almostfreebird

From a non-native-speaker's point of view, I sometimes read Conan Doyle, H.G Wells, Maughm, Dumas(english version) and sometimes _Edgar Rice Burroughs_, Twain, though I've never read them through except Dean Koonzs and John Grisham, just for learning English though Id read through a lot of them in Japanese version when I was a child. But I never care whether its BE or AE. Big difference for me between BE and AE is only the manner of pronouncing words, though it doesnt bother me, its just a unique character for me. Slangs are also facinating things to learn if you're interested in movies or pop culture and so on, and this thread is also interesting and entertaining for me if I may say.


----------



## regins7487

Just to clarify, I'm sorry if I implied that this sounds pretentious when everyone says it - I obviously didn't express myself very well. I just meant that it would sound that way if I were to use it as it doesn't come naturally to me. Although, as Loob points out, the way we all speak is obviously different depending on the context. 

Incidentally, is the following common in AE or does it sound equally uneducated?

"who wants to come?"
"me (and X)!"


----------



## JazzByChas

And as far as context, I'm sure that we all (AE/BE, or any other English) speak incorrectly/in a more colloquial/informal register.

I imagine I am a person who speaks in several registers, from extremely "street" to very polished and formal.  However, that said, I still find that when I put my mind on "autopilot” I tend to speak most often in the manner in which I was taught.  I am not sure what register that is…maybe “autopilot” register?

Further, the "register" we teach our children almost always contradicts what they speak naturally.  Typically they always use nothing but an informal register.

Which begs the question: which comes first: the "register" or the training?


----------



## JamesM

Loob said:


> Can I please, in a not-very-small voice, mention the word "CONTEXT*"*?
> 
> Every single one of us uses language differently depending on the situation, the people we're with, our objectives, the way we're trying to portray ourselves and so on.
> 
> It's clear that in the contexts ewie and regins7487 use "me and her went" they do so because it's appropriate - because "she and I went" would strike a false note.
> 
> With friends I say things I wouldn't dream of saying in a job interview. And vice versa.


 
This is not what I understood Ewie to be saying.  He was saying that he would use "me and her" in all contexts (other than in writing to the OED.)


----------



## Robert_Hope

I cannot think of a single occasion when I might use "me and her went to the pub" and this is where the lack context is leading to all sorts of different responses.

If someone were to ask me what I and a lady acquaintance had done that evening, I would probably respond

"*We've* been to the pub" or "*We* went to the pub"

I hope I'm not taking this too far off context (I'm assuming that the thread is about the use of me vs. I and her vs. she rather than where the two people went) but how would you ask two people, what he and she had done that evening?

Whereas, again, I'd use a different construction (something like "And what have *you two* done this evening") 

If you were, however, talking to just one of the people, would you say
"What have she and you done this evening"/"What have you and she done this evening"? I suspect not. To my ears, that sounds worse then "What have you and her done this evening?" I would, however, use neither construction.

I've just sat here trying to think of questions I might respond to with "me and her" and in all cases, I would say "We".

Britisch English speaker from the Midlands, Staffordshire.


----------



## Jacobtm

I'm sure all the grammar-conscious people here cringe regularly when normal people use constructions like "Me and her went to the store." But they're very common, and correcting this particular mistake is a great way to get an exasperated eye-roll from the corrected. 

I doubt anyone will say "Yes, that's correct." But if it's so commonly used, how can one declare that its "incorrect" and not just a co-equal alternative way of saying "She and I went to the store"? How can anyone claim to draw the line between an incorrect usage or a new variety in the language?


----------



## entangledbank

It's perfectly _grammatical_: it's regularly generated by competent native speakers in normal speech, and they don't make corrections when they notice they've said it. What it isn't is _standard_. It's not in the register used in newspapers, radio broadcasts, and so on. It is also not in everyone's _idiolect_ (personal dialect): I, for example, never say it, however casually I speak.

Whether it's _correct_ is a statement about how you personally choose to use the word 'correct'. This word is not a well-defined linguistic term. I know (more or less) what it means to say something is grammatical, or standard, but I don't know what someone is claiming if they say something is or isn't correct*.

Whether it will become standard in twenty or fifty years is not something I feel I can predict. At the moment it doesn't feel as if it's becoming more standard: it doesn't occasionally pop up in radio talks or newspaper columns.

_Edit:_ I should qualify this. In this forum I routinely say things are correct or not, because it's a simple word, but I say it when they're uncomplicatedly grammatical in the standard dialect, or unacceptable in any variety. It's only in the grey area where the 'me and her' example sits that I don't know what kind of claim 'correct' is.


----------



## Jacobtm

entangledbank said:


> It's perfectly _grammatical_: it's regularly generated by competent native speakers in normal speech, and they don't make corrections when they notice they've said it. What it isn't is _standard_. It's not in the register used in newspapers, radio broadcasts, and so on. It is also not in everyone's _idiolect_ (personal dialect): I, for example, never say it, however casually I speak.
> 
> Whether it's _correct_ is a statement about how you personally choose to use the word 'correct'. This word is not a well-defined linguistic term. I know (more or less) what it means to say something is grammatical, or standard, but I don't know what someone is claiming if they say something is or isn't correct*.
> 
> Whether it will become standard in twenty or fifty years is not something I feel I can predict. At the moment it doesn't feel as if it's becoming more standard: it doesn't occasionally pop up in radio talks or newspaper columns.
> 
> _Edit:_ I should qualify this. In this forum I routinely say things are correct or not, because it's a simple word, but I say it when they're uncomplicatedly grammatical in the standard dialect, or unacceptable in any variety. It's only in the grey area where the 'me and her' example sits that I don't know what kind of claim 'correct' is.



Could you explain how you're using "grammatical" in your first paragraph? I've never heard "grammatical" contrasted against "standard", and in fact have always heard them both used interchangeably with "correct" or "proper".

Mirriam-Webster lists the following as some definitions of "grammar". They all seem to point to grammar conforming to the rules or proper usage of language, as opposed to your use where "grammatical" means anything a native speaker says intentionally. 

*1 a* *:* the study of the classes of words, their inflections, and their functions and relations in the sentence *b* *:* a study of what is to be preferred and what avoided in inflection and syntax
*2 a* *:* the characteristic system of inflections and syntax of a language *b* *:* a system of rules that defines the grammatical structure of a language


----------



## entangledbank

When linguists say 'grammatical' we mean "generated by a grammar". In early childhood a speaker acquires a lexicon, syntax, phonology, semantics, and so on. This knowledge is to a high degree rule-structured, and these rules generate sentences that have never been made before.

Only one of your four Merriam-Webster definitions refer to 'proper' usage. Linguists regard this usage as just factually incorrect, and irrelevant. If someone claims X is ungrammatical in sense 1b, and the facts contradict them, the claimant is simply wrong: they don't understand English grammar.


----------



## panjandrum

Sorry to move today's posts to the end of such a long thread, but it is on precisely the same topic.  I'm hoping that its new position might save those who have already posted at length on the topic from having to repeat themselves.

It does, however, mean that newcomers will need to start about fifty posts ago 
...
I just did.  It makes for a very interesting read.


----------



## preppie

NO,  I never use the phrase (" me and" whomever).  I do hear far too often on this side of the pond but gratefully not from anyone I look up to.


----------



## liliput

ewie said:


> Please rest assured, Lexi, that I _love_ English ~ in all its 'richness and variety', i.e. the bad as well as the good.  And I say _me and her_ ALL THE TIME**



You and me both.


----------



## ewie

Jacobtm said:


> How can anyone claim to draw the line between an incorrect usage or a new variety in the language?


_[emphasis added]_

It's surprisingly often the case in English that stuff people say, such as _me and her_ or _I were going _(or other examples I can't think of), aren't new at all ~ they've been around for centuries, having arisen in the times when the language was a great swirling mess being cobbled together out of odd bit of this and that, and have only recently, since English became 'standardized' round 'prestige' dialects, come to be seen as non-standard.  _I were going_ is so ubiquitous in this corner of England in everyday _(ahem)_ 'ordinary' speech that it is, effectively, the standard.


----------



## cubaMania

preppie said:


> NO,  I never use the phrase (" me and" whomever).  I do hear far too often on this side of the pond but gratefully not from anyone I look up to.



I imagine you meant that to apply only to the subject.  Of course, "me" is the standard pronoun when in the position of object.

Hyper-correction example similar to some I have heard:
"They criticized Michael and I."  instead of the standard "They criticized Michael and me."


----------



## preppie

You clarification is correct.  I was staying within the bounds of the thread - using 'me and her went.."


----------



## Jacobtm

entangledbank said:


> When linguists say 'grammatical' we mean "generated by a grammar". In early childhood a speaker acquires a lexicon, syntax, phonology, semantics, and so on. This knowledge is to a high degree rule-structured, and these rules generate sentences that have never been made before.
> 
> Only one of your four Merriam-Webster definitions refer to 'proper' usage. Linguists regard this usage as just factually incorrect, and irrelevant. If someone claims X is ungrammatical in sense 1b, and the facts contradict them, the claimant is simply wrong: they don't understand English grammar.



Ok, well could you explain this explanation a little bit? Here's what I got:

Grammatical = generated by grammar.
Grammar = a set of rules for a language.

Now, are you saying that grammar is ANYTHING following a set of rules, even if these rules are "incorrect" or made up on the spot? If I were to replace all my articles with Spanish articles, based on the gender of whatever noun in Spanish, that would be grammatical? For instance: "Los kids are playing with el dog."

If that's the case, that grammar is just any set of rules made up by anyone at all, what differentiates the set of rules that are considered "correct" or "proper" and any random set of rules? 

I trust you'll understand that when almost anyone speaks of English grammar, they're speaking of a set of rules which (to them) is the "correct" way to speak English. So It's odd to hear that English grammar has nothing to do with correct or incorrect application of rules and exceptions.


----------



## mplsray

Jacobtm said:


> Ok, well could you explain this explanation a little bit? Here's what I got:
> 
> Grammatical = generated by grammar.
> Grammar = a set of rules for a language.
> 
> Now, are you saying that grammar is ANYTHING following a set of rules, even if these rules are "incorrect" or made up on the spot? If I were to replace all my articles with Spanish articles, based on the gender of whatever noun in Spanish, that would be grammatical? For instance: "Los kids are playing with el dog."
> 
> If that's the case, that grammar is just any set of rules made up by anyone at all, what differentiates the set of rules that are considered "correct" or "proper" and any random set of rules?
> 
> I trust you'll understand that when almost anyone speaks of English grammar, they're speaking of a set of rules which (to them) is the "correct" way to speak English. So It's odd to hear that English grammar has nothing to do with correct or incorrect application of rules and exceptions.



A grammatical rule is "correct" if it can be used to generate a grammatical sentence in a language. A grammatical rule is "standard" if it can be used to generate a grammatical sentence in the standard dialect of a language. Teachers may still tend to call a nonstandard usage "incorrect," but linguists see this as less useful to the student than identifying such a usage as "nonstandard." (See item 4 of this resolution from the Linguistic Society of America.)

The same is true for teaching English to nonnative speakers of English. Such a student should, in my opinion, be taught that "Me and her went to the store" is grammatical in a nonstandard dialect--since there is absolutely no doubt that it is--if only as part of their passive knowledge of the language, but that the usage in question is nonstandard. A statement should be called "incorrect" or "ungrammatical" only if it is ungrammatical in _any_ English dialect.


----------



## liliput

Robert_Hope said:


> I cannot think of a single occasion when I might use "me and her went to the pub" and this is where the lack context is leading to all sorts of different responses.
> 
> If someone were to ask me what I and a lady acquaintance had done that evening, I would probably respond
> 
> "*We've* been to the pub" or "*We* went to the pub"
> 
> I hope I'm not taking this too far off context (I'm assuming that the thread is about the use of me vs. I and her vs. she rather than where the two people went) but how would you ask two people, what he and she had done that evening?
> 
> Whereas, again, I'd use a different construction (something like "And what have *you two* done this evening")
> 
> If you were, however, talking to just one of the people, would you say
> "What have she and you done this evening"/"What have you and she done this evening"? I suspect not. To my ears, that sounds worse then "What have you and her done this evening?" I would, however, use neither construction.
> 
> I've just sat here trying to think of questions I might respond to with "me and her" and in all cases, I would say "We".
> 
> Britisch English speaker from the Midlands, Staffordshire.



I agree that in many contexts we're more likely to say "we went to the pub" or "I went to the pub with her" but "me and her" is a likely response to "Who went to the pub?" - "we" in this case would not suffice as you would need to indicate who "we" includes. This might be true for the question "what did you do?" too, if the question is directed at several people,or in any situation where it is necessary to define "we": "Me and her went to the pub, but Dave went to the cinema".
Having said all that, I'm certain I would be more likely to use the person's name rather than a pronoun ("me and her" sounds worse than "me and Mary" to me - perhaps due to politeness rather than grammar), but the use of "me" would be the same: "Me and Sandra went to the pub".


----------



## Jacobtm

mplsray said:


> A grammatical rule is "correct" if it can be used to generate a grammatical sentence in a language.
> A statement should be called "incorrect" or "ungrammatical" only if it is ungrammatical in _any_ English dialect.


That definition doesn't really help me make sense of "grammar" or "grammatical". 

Grammatical rules are correct if they make grammatical sentences. 

Fun rides are fun if you have a fun time.

Hot days are hot if you feel hot.

Do you see what I'm getting at here? Can you define "grammatical" or "grammar" using outside criteria? What defines "grammar" besides it being "grammatical"?


----------



## iconoclast

In reference to Lexiphile's earlier post, I don't believe that 'me and her went to the pub' is the preserve of the under-educated under-30 brigade: I have no problem saying it when speaking colloquially, and not only did I do Latin till the age of 16, but it's also quite a long time since I was under 30. Naturally, I also have no problem code-switching to Standard 'she and I' if necessary. I also suspect that it crept in thanks to the influence of French after the Norman Conquest - the perfectly natural 'It's me' faithfully mirrors French, after all, while the alleged Standard 'It is I' sounds poncily Pythonesque these days.


----------



## mplsray

Jacobtm said:


> That definition doesn't really help me make sense of "grammar" or "grammatical".
> 
> Grammatical rules are correct if they make grammatical sentences.
> 
> Fun rides are fun if you have a fun time.
> 
> Hot days are hot if you feel hot.
> 
> Do you see what I'm getting at here? Can you define "grammatical" or "grammar" using outside criteria? What defines "grammar" besides it being "grammatical"?



The situation is indeed circular as I have outlined. The one place that grammar cannot be so defined is when you're dealing with an utterance which is to some degree artificial, as is sometimes the case with long sentences written in formal documents. When dealing with an artificial grammar, there is no way of definitively identifying an utterance as grammatical. There will no doubt be many opinions about what form is preferable, but there is no way to objectively identify any of the opinions as the "correct" one.


----------



## Forero

"Me and her went" does not represent an innovation but a long-standing habit passed down from generation to generation. Educational institutions have been teaching against it ever since it was the job of grammar schools to prepare children for learning Latin. Latin was required for university students not just for cultural enrichment or good thinking skills but for the purpose of being able to read text books, which for all subjects were in common Latin as a matter of course.

But in contrast to the situation in the English-speaking world, a native speaker of Spanish or Italian does not need to be taught not to say the equivalent of "Me and her went", no matter how young or uneducated they may be. It simply is not part of the language that children learn in the first place.

Many native speakers of English grow up hearing things like "Me and her went" and have to "un-learn" them later.  No doubt there are places where "She and I went" is normal and colloquial, but I believe there are many more places, as there have been for centuries, in which "Me and her went" is natural and colloquial when speaking with family and friends (but not for school).

As for the supposed logic of using subjective case (sometimes even called "nominative case" after the Latin model) in a compound subject, the fact is that "It's me" is more common than "It is I", even in most educated English, and this suggests that the form "me" is not strictly "objective" in meaning.

And since a plural verb form in Modern English does not show person (first, second, third) and does not agree with just part of its subject, a pronoun partial subject does not logically have to be marked as if it were the subject of the verb. Indeed it makes sense to mark it as part of a compound.

The situation in French is interesting. French, unlike other Latinate languages, lost most of the phonetically distinct verb endings characteristic of Latin, and subject pronouns came to be required where they were not required in other Latinate languages. The subjective forms in French are phonetically unstressed, being something like person-indicating verb affixes. But in a compound subject, a pronoun receives stress and has to take a stressable form, similar to but different from the unstressed objective form.

English too has lost most of its distinctive verb endings and has developed distinct stressed and unstressed pronouns, at least in the spoken language. It is less "evolved" in this direction than French, but it seems reasonable that English would exhibit some, but not all, of the same devices as French when it comes to pronoun usage and pronoun-verb agreement.

This commonality does not imply that French grammar influenced English grammar, or that the tendencies I have mentioned have to produce the same results in English as in French (or as in Dutch or Afrikaans or whatever), but I daresay the state of affairs in English is not anomalous. Neither is "Me and her went" something artificial dreamed up by kids trying to be iconoclastic.

Both "She and I went" and "Me and her went" are our heritage as speakers of English, "She and I went" being the standard, educated form taught ever so many times at various grade levels throughout the English-speaking world, and "Me and her went" being the natural, familiar form used in many if not most English-speaking places.


----------



## iconoclast

Very nicely put, Forero. From my knowledge of German and Dutch, moreover, their equivalent of 'It's me' translates as 'I am it', so English, which at heart is still a thoroughly Germanic language, has departed significantly from the fold, perhaps originally thanks to some influence from French - but once things catch on they do have a habit of sticking. 

It's interesting that it's only with "joint" pronouns that this happens, not only in subject position but also in object position - the most notorious example of the latter being 'between you and I', 'between he and I'. What is striking is the switching-around of object for subject forms and subject for object forms in such cases. In this, English is very unlike its neighbours.


----------



## LV4-26

iconoclast said:


> [...]It's interesting that it's only with "joint" pronouns that this happens, not only in subject position but also in object position - the most notorious example of the latter being 'between you and I', 'between he and I'. [...]


But that's just a case of hypercorrection isn't it?


----------



## ewie

_Hyper*mis*correction_ is what I call that


----------



## Forero

A pronoun that is only part of an object does not itself have to be interpreted as an object. For example, _who_ does not become _whom_ when it is part of an object: "I know who John said was taking the cookies", not "I know whom ...." In school we learn that pronouns joined in a compound such as "you and me" are supposed to take the form appropriate to the role of the compound, in this case the role of prepositional object, but ...

_Between_ is a unique preposition in that it is normally not used with just one singular pronoun (e.g. "between me"), so "me" in "between you and me" is not the object of the preposition _between_. This makes it a perfect candidate for a disjunctive form.

I think most native English speakers are more comfortable with _me_, as opposed to _I,_ for a pronoun that is neither subject nor object, but some, when in doubt, are more comfortable with _I._

It is curious that even Spanish uses the equivalent of "between you and I".


----------



## natkretep

Jacobtm said:


> Can you define "grammatical" or "grammar" using outside criteria? What defines "grammar" besides it being "grammatical"?



The grammar of a language (variety/dialect) is the construction that native speakers conform to. So it is the speech community that defines what is grammatical. The problem arises when there are different varieties of the language and there are differences. The variety that is raised to the status of a standard is also often deemed the 'correct' one.

So, you construction _Los kids are playing with el dog_ is not grammatical because there is no English-speaking community that uses this regularly. If a sufficient number of people pick this up and it becomes regular then it will be grammatical. You see what I'm saying?

The 'me and her' construction IS grammatical to speakers of some (informal) varieties of English. And as many have pointed out, it doesn't find its way into _The Times_ or the BBC. So saying 'me and her' is appropriate for some varieties in some contexts is not being anarchic.


----------



## mplsray

natkretep said:


> The grammar of a language (variety/dialect) is the construction that native speakers conform to. So it is the speech community that defines what is grammatical. The problem arises when there are different varieties of the language and there are differences. The variety that is raised to the status of a standard is also often deemed the 'correct' one.
> 
> So, you construction _Los kids are playing with el dog_ is not grammatical because there is no English-speaking community that uses this regularly. If a sufficient number of people pick this up and it becomes regular then it will be grammatical. You see what I'm saying?
> 
> The 'me and her' construction IS grammatical to speakers of some (informal) varieties of English. And as many have pointed out, it doesn't find its way into _The Times_ or the BBC. So saying 'me and her' is appropriate for some varieties in some contexts is not being anarchic.



A particularly unpleasant example of an artificial grammar can be found in the mock-Ebonics presented in some supposed examples of African American Vernacular English presented as a straw man by some critics of that dialect. What makes an utterance grammatical in English or any language is that it is perceived by its speakers as grammatical in their mother dialect.

(Even when speakers have no conscious concept of grammar--many Chinese encounter the concept of grammar when first learning a foreign language, for example--the grammatical rules of an utterance which the speakers find to be "right" or "what we might say" would be revealed by a linguistic analysis.)


----------



## iconoclast

The strange fact of the matter is that the one faculty that, even with ever greater research into the communication systems of other "large" species such as our fellow apes, as well as dolphins, whales, and elephants, our species remains, to our knowledge, the lone possessor of grammatical language (i.e. words & rules). Yet it is the one piece of information that a good 99% perecent of the population of the globe is not aware of. Does it matter?

Yes, it does, as long as social and class lines are drawn, among other considerations, on how one speaks. For example, it is a commonplace here in Mexico for folks to comment that indigenous "dialectos" (aka languages, in linguistic terms) have no grammar. It is no doubt no coincidence, therefore, that indigenous people have been at the bottom of the pecking order here since Cortez & Co pulled off their amazing coup. Moreover, cultural and race bias can be read into the mindset that bleats out statements that ought to be self-evidently false, but, sadly, are not.

That there are many varieties of speech (dialects), that the standard variety is but the dominant dialectal variety, and that prestige has accrued to that variety over the centuries does not mean that non-standard varieties are any less valid, which is not to say that there aren't some wierd ways of applying rules. By definition - their speakers are human - such ways of speaking are governed by rules, however divergent from the standard they may be.

Moreover, many well-educated middle-class types, myself for example, are quite happy to code-switch from "general colloquial" to "approximant standard" when necessary - and back to a bit more locally flavoured "home colloquial" when visiting home, which is the only time I ever say "aye" these days. 

Well, it's late getting, and I must have a word with herself before I go to bed.  Me and her's got to sort out the wain for tomorrow.


----------



## panjandrum

I think it is time to conclude this  thread.
It has gone far from the specifics of the thread topic into a general discussion.
However interesting, it has no place in a forum that aims to provide specific answers to specific questions.


----------

