# me or you are/is/am the best?



## JoseCarlosdel

I think it is "You and me are the best"

But What is the correct in this sentence?
Me or you are/is/am the best.

is the same with "you or me"?

Thanks


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## JackInMadrid

This is touching on a polemic issue in regard to
"You and me" vs "You and I"

Some people say that "You and me" is incorrect because strict grammar says it should be "You and I"
But in everyday language, you will hear "You and me" or "Me and you" a lot more than "You and I"
In my opinion, due to its massive usage, these "me" forms are ok. 
BUT some people disagree. In a thread a few months ago one forero said: 
"Yes it is common but it belongs to the lower oral register of regional dialects among uneducated socials strata"
I certainly don't consider myself uneducated.

So you'll make up your own mind on that.

So, to answer your question....
Better to say "One of us"

One of us is the best

or another is:
It's either you or me that's best. (here we conjugate to 3rd person)

Jack


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## kevcito

"You and I are the best."

To determine whether you use "I" or "me," you can, for the most part, ask yourself which one is correct: "I am" or "me am."

"You and me are the best." 
"You and me am the best."
"You and I am the best."
"You and I are the best." 

"He gave the present to Stephen and I."
"He gave the present to Stephen and I."
"He gave the present to Stephen and me."
"He gave the present to Stephen and me."


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## Ms Missy

Kevcito:  I agree that this is an excellent way of determining which is the correct construction to use.  It's common to hear native English speakers say "me and her went to the movies."  But once you break it down to two separate sentences, it becomes clear that Me went to the movies or Her went to the movies, are both incorrect.  However, She and I went to the movies, will always be consistent!


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## very

Kevcito, I bet you don't say "It is *I*, Kevcito" in reply to the question "Who is there?" when you knock on somebody's door.

That would sound mock-Shakespearean or just plain anal to most native English speakers, at least where I live.

I would tend to go along more with what JackinMadrid has said.
It depends on the context and the register, but in everyday informal speech "you and me" is fine and used by most people.

I think it's best that non-natives learn the strictly correct grammatical rules, yes, but also that they be aware that the rules are not always so strictly applied by native English speakers (and not just those from "uneducated social strata").

Language is flexible and rules aren't always permament. Otherwise we wouldn't be talking/writing like we do today.


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## Edwin

To add some context, one might say, "*You and I* are the best couple in the dance contest, so they should give the prize to *you and me*. 

O se puede decir "*We* are the best couple..."

Como lo dirías en español: ¿"Tu y yo son ..."? o ¿"Tu y yo somos.."  o ?


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## cubaMania

very said:


> Kevcito, I bet you don't say "It is *I*, Kevcito" in reply to the question "Who is there?" when you knock on somebody's door.
> ...


I'm with kevcito on this one. Your example *It is I* versus the commonly used *It is me* is not the same grammatical structure. Yes, we do say *It is me.* But we do not say *Me am here.* We say *I am here.* Hence *You and I are here*, not "You and me are here."


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## roxcyn

Edwin said:


> To add some context, one might say, "*You and I* are the best couple in the dance contest, so they should give the prize to *you and me*.
> 
> O se puede decir "*We* are the best couple..."
> 
> Como lo dirías en español: ¿"T*ú* y yo son ..."?  o ¿"T*ú* y yo somos.."   o ?



Espero que sea útil.


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## very

cubaMania said:


> I'm with kevcito on this one. Your example *It is I* versus the commonly used *It is me* is not the same grammatical structure. Yes, we do say *It is me.* But we do not say *Me am here.* We say *I am here.* Hence *You and I are here*, not "You and me are here."


Hi. Can you explain why it is not the same grammatical structure?

It is *I *... *I = *subject pronoun

It is *me* ... *me = *object pronoun

If we are going to follow the strict grammatical rules then "It is me" is incorrect. However, it's what most people say most of the time (at least where I live) and, as mentioned, "It is I" sounds almost comical today, apart from in certain contexts.

I have noticed that Americans are much more finicky when it comes to this choice of pronoun issue, which is probably why I (being from the UK) am more in agreement with what JackinMadrid has said.


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## Edwin

very said:


> I have noticed that Americans are much more finicky when it comes to this choice of pronoun issue, which is probably why I (being from the UK) am more in agreement with what JackinMadrid has said.



One thing I have hear some Brits use (even John Lennon in a movie a few days ago) is *me* insteady of *my*, as in "I gave it to me Mum".   At least that's one usage that distinguishes us colonists from the mother country.  I don't think that is heard over here.


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## Ms Missy

I think a lot depends on whether you want answers that are grammatically correct, or answers that are more in line with common usage among native speakers.  For school assignments you'd probably want to be grammatically correct, whereas if you want to engage in conversation with naive speakers, you wouldn't want to sound too "bookish."


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## Ms Missy

Ms Missy said:


> I think a lot depends on whether you want answers that are grammatically correct, or answers that are more in line with common usage among native speakers. For school assignments you'd probably want to be grammatically correct, whereas if you want to engage in conversation with *naive* speakers, you wouldn't want to sound too "bookish."


 
Ooops!  That was supposed to be *native *speakers (so no pun was intended)


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## mazbook

Otra cuestión es la orden de las palabras.  En inglés "*You* and I" o "*You* and me" es la orden normal.  Creo, en español, la orden normal es "*Yo y tú*". Entonces, "I and you" o "me and you" suenan muy mal para anglohablantes.  Si escucha, seguro no es un angloparlante nativo.

Saludos desde Mazatlán


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## very

Edwin said:


> One thing I have hear some Brits use (even John Lennon in a movie a few days ago) is *me* insteady of *my*, as in "I gave it to me Mum".


You're right, Edwin... that is a very common phenomenon here (and I often speak that way too), but I would actually consider that as non-Standard English, whereas (for me) "It is me" is okay in informal (standard) English.


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## Edwin

mazbook said:


> Otra cuestión es la orden de las palabras.  En inglés "*You* and I" o "*You* and me" es la orden normal.  Creo, en español, la orden normal es "*Yo y tú*". Entonces, "I and you" o "me and you" suenan muy mal para anglohablantes.  Si escucha, seguro no es un angloparlante nativo.



Siempre creía que decimos "you and me" y "you and I" porque es más cortés decirlo así. 

En cuanto al "yo y tú" contra "tú y yo", buscando con Google obtengo más resultados con "tú y yo" (1400000).       Quizás sea debido a la canción de Thalia con ese título. "yo y tú" solamente da 87900 resultados.



> Tú y yo vivamos el momento
> Tú y yo sin arrepentimientos
> Baila corazón, pero baila que te quiero
> Tú y yo, ay pero que bueno
> Para que estemos los dos
> Para que estemos siempre, siempre tú y yo


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## mazbook

Hola Edwin, I no longer Google things like this, as I have found that bad, absolutely bad, and really terrible English, Spanish, or whatever is often found on Google more often than correct English, Spanish, or whatever.   Google makes no judgements on grammar usage, therefore it's not a reliable indicator.

Saludos desde Mazatlán


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## Pandorga

mazbook said:


> Otra cuestión es *el *orden de las palabras. En inglés "*You* and I" o "*You* and me" es *el *orden normal. Creo, *que* en español, *el* orden normal es "*Yo y tú*". Entonces, "I and you" o "me and you" suenan muy mal para anglohablantes. Si *se *escucha, seguro *que* no es un angloparlante nativo.
> *(sí puedes decir: "Dieron la orden de atacar", pero el orden de las cosas es masculino)*
> Saludos desde Mazatlán


 

Hola Mazbook:
Creo que tienes cambiado el uso del " yo y tú", eso suena *fatal *en español. Casi no lo utilizan ni las personas con menos estudios. Cuando a algún amigo se le escapa, decimos: " El burro delante, que no falte" (ja,ja)

No se debe utilizar de esa forma. Decimos "Juan, María y yo vamos al cine". 

SIEMPRE el "yo" el *último* de todos.


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## Edwin

mazbook said:


> Hola Edwin, I no longer Google things like this, as I have found that bad, absolutely bad, and really terrible English, Spanish, or whatever is often found on Google more often than correct English, Spanish, or whatever.   Google makes no judgements on grammar usage, therefore it's not a reliable indicator.
> 
> Saludos desde Mazatlán



Hola Mazbook, un desafío:  can you give me some examples of bad English where one gets more Google hits than the corresponding correct phrase. (And no fair using "ain't" versus "isn't OR am not OR aren't"  )

At least the Google search is a reliable indicator of what one sees on the Internet. Perhaps eventually one might be able to search better databases of English (Spanish--whatever) usage. Maybe something like all the books on the Gutenberg project. which apparently contains about 20,000 English books. Even now one can search using Google Books. But the output is not easy to interpret statistically. And there are  various other websites where one can obtain better "corpuses" of the English language, but I prefer to just use the quick and dirty Google corpus.


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## Cosmopolita

Pandorga said:


> Hola Mazbook:
> Creo que tienes cambiado el uso del " yo y tú", eso suena *fatal *en español. Casi no lo utilizan ni las personas con menos estudios. Cuando a algún amigo se le escapa, decimos: " El burro delante, que no falte" (ja,ja)
> 
> No se debe utilizar de esa forma. Decimos "Juan, María y yo vamos al cine".
> 
> SIEMPRE el "yo" el *último* de todos.


 
It's true, to hear in Spanish something like "yo y tú" or "Yo, María, Martín" is painful to your ears. Children sometimes say that because they are still learning. However, the "yo" must be always at the end. And here in Argentina, when somebody says "yo" in the first place, we say "el burro adelante para que no se espante".
On the other hand, I thought that in English it was common and accepted to say "me and you". So, it is a surprise for me to know that that sounds awful. I think I've heard it a lot in movies... am I wrong?


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## former_chomsky_advocate

kevcito said:


> "You and I are the best."
> 
> To determine whether you use "I" or "me," you can, for the most part, ask yourself which one is correct: "I am" or "me am."
> 
> "You and me are the best."
> "You and me am the best."
> "You and I am the best."
> "You and I are the best."
> 
> "He gave the present to Stephen and I."
> "He gave the present to Stephen and I."
> "He gave the present to Stephen and me."
> "He gave the present to Stephen and me."



This is, however, almost entirely prescriptivist usage wrt the usage of the subject pronoun.  WRT object pronouns, it's overwhelmingly accurate, although still a tad prescriptivist.

English, overwhelmingly, in emphatic position, uses the object pronoun rather than the subject pronoun, much like French.


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## former_chomsky_advocate

I'll just say,  (ENTRE TU Y YO) that you don't always use prepositional pronouns in a prepositional phrase....


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## Edwin

Cosmopolita said:


> On the other hand, I thought that in English it was common and accepted to say "me and you". So, it is a surprise for me to know that that sounds awful. I think I've heard it a lot in movies... am I wrong?



Some people do say, "me and you". But that doesn't mean it is correct or that it doesn't irritate many native English speakers. A lot of people also say "yo y tú" see the Google links I gave in #15 above... am I wrong?


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## jdenson

very said:


> I would tend to go along more with what JackinMadrid has said.
> It depends on the context and the register, but in everyday informal speech "you and me" is fine and used by most people.


"You and me" as a subject is not informal (it's just wrong), it's not fine, and, although I haven't conducted a survey, I don't think it's used by most people.  In spite of Very's experience, there are many people who cringe when they hear, "him and I went to the movie" and "he gave it to my wife and I". I am often told by friends and associates, people who make hiring decisions at major companies and public instituions, that they rejected a job applicant because of his poor English. Their question is always, "If he is incompetent in his own language, in what else is he incompetent?"
JD


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## Edwin

jdenson said:


> "If he is incompetent in his own language, in what else is he incompetent?"
> JD



More likely I think they would say, *"...what else is he incompentent in?"* 

The rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition is one of the Non-Errors of English grammar.


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## cubaMania

very said:


> Hi. Can you explain why it is not the same grammatical structure?
> 
> It is *I *... *I = *subject pronoun
> 
> It is *me* ... *me = *object pronoun
> 
> If we are going to follow the strict grammatical rules then "It is me" is incorrect. However, it's what most people say most of the time (at least where I live) and, as mentioned, "It is I" sounds almost comical today, apart from in certain contexts.
> 
> I have noticed that Americans are much more finicky when it comes to this choice of pronoun issue, which is probably why *I* ... *am more in agreement* with what JackinMadrid has said.


 
Hi very,
Sorry it has taken me so long to answer you. (Christmas and all that stuff intervened. Happy Holidays.)

This is an interesting subject and one addressed in many grammar texts and forums. But before I point you to some of those write-ups, let me use your own words as an example:
You are trying to compare *You and I/me are the best* to *It is I/me*.
You correctly point out that most people say *It is me*. However, notice that in your sentence above you say *I am more in agreement*, not *me am more in agreement*. So your own usage confirms that the subject of the sentence is clearly in the subjective case, i.e. *I* not *me*. So kevicito's summary showing *You and I are the best* being correct and *You and me are the best* being incorrect agrees with your own usage.

*It is I* versus *It is me*, however, is another matter. When the pronoun follows the verb (especially a form of the verb "to be") common English usage does substitute the objective case for the grammatically more formal subjective case:


> It should be noted that the verb *to be* does not take an object. In formal, written English, when the verb *to be* is immediately followed by a personal pronoun, the pronoun must usually be in the subjective case. In the following examples, the pronouns following the verb *to be* are in the subjective case.
> e.g. It is I.
> That was he.
> This is she.
> Those are they.
> 
> However, in informal English, this rule is usually ignored. In informal English, when a pronoun immediately follows any verb, including the verb *to be*, the objective form of the pronoun is usually used. Thus, in informal English the sentence *It is I* would usually be expressed *It is me*, and the sentence *That was he* would usually be expressed *That was him*.


 
Here is another good explanation indicating that both *It is I* and *It is me* are in reputable use:


> *It is I or it is me?*
> It is I or it is me? According to the _Merriam Webster's Dictionary of the English Language_,"...instead of the old choice between right and wrong we are now choosing a style; it is a choice that is much closer to the reality of usage than the old one was...Clearly, both the _it is I_ and _it's me_ patterns are in reputable use and have been for a considerable time. _It is I_ tends to be used in more formal or more stuffy situations; _it's me_ predominates in real and fictional speech and in a more relaxed writing style. _Him, her, us,_ and _them_ may be less common after the verb _to be_ than _me_ is, but they are far from rare and are equally good" (566, 568).


 
But this use of the objective case for pronouns following a form of the verb "to be" has nothing to do with pronouns used as the subject of a sentence. You would never say *Me is the best*. The confusion enters when there are two pronouns together as the subject of the sentence. *You and I are the best* is the only grammatically correct form. There is no special exception for substituting *me* for *I* in such a sentence.

For some reason some English speakers become confused about the correct case to use when there are two pronouns instead of one. But as kevcito points out, it is easy to figure out the correct case simply by forming the same sentence using only one pronoun instead of two. Once you do that you can clearly hear that the objective case is not correct for the subject of the sentence.
*You and me are the best* may sound OK to you (not to me), but if you say:
*Me am the best* you will know immediately that is the wrong case.
The same holds true for the use of the objective case for pronouns used as the object in the sentence.
*He did it for you and I* may sound OK to many (not to me) but again it is the two pronouns together that cause the confusion. If you say:
*He did it for I* you can clearly see/hear that *I* is not the correct case.

As a note I will add that I have even run across some grammarians writing that *It is I* is not acceptable and that only *It is me* is acceptable. I do believe they are quite a minority, however.

Though I myself usually use *It is I* because I grew up saying and hearing that form (I'm rather old, you see *) I am aware that in modern English *It is me* predominates and is correct and reputable usage. However, I can tell you that at least in the circles in which I travel, people would whince if they heard *You and me are the best.* To most people of my acquaintance that sounds as jarring as would *Me am the best.*

I hope that clarifies my point that the grammatical structures you were trying to compare are, in fact, not comparable.

* I don't feel at all Shakespearian when saying this, but I do feel old.


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## mazbook

Hola Pandorga:





Pandorga said:


> Hola Mazbook:
> Creo que tienes cambiado el uso del " yo y tú", eso suena *fatal *en español. Casi no lo utilizan ni las personas con menos estudios. Cuando a algún amigo se le escapa, decimos: " El burro delante, que no falte" (ja,ja)
> 
> No se debe utilizar de esa forma. Decimos "Juan, María y yo vamos al cine".
> 
> SIEMPRE el "yo" el *último* de todos.


Muchísimas gracias —¡otra vez!— por sus correcciones *Y* la lección en español.  No sé porque aprendí la idea de "yo y tú" es correcta.  ¡Demasiado español de la calle, creo!

Su argumento de este orden de palabras es la verdad en inglés también.  "Me and you" es un mal corrupción.

Saludos desde Mazatlán


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## mazbook

Hola Edwin:





Edwin said:


> Hola Mazbook, un desafío:  can you give me some examples of bad English where one gets more Google hits than the corresponding correct phrase. (And no fair using "ain't" versus "isn't OR am not OR aren't"  )
> 
> At least the Google search is a reliable indicator of what one sees on the Internet. Perhaps eventually one might be able to search better databases of English (Spanish--whatever) usage. Maybe something like all the books on the Gutenberg project. which apparently contains about 20,000 English books. Even now one can search using Google Books. But the output is not easy to interpret statistically. And there are  various other websites where one can obtain better "corpuses" of the English language, but I prefer to just use the quick and dirty Google corpus.


I can't really give you examples, as it's been over a year since I stopped.  I post frequently on another language forum and I and others who posted there finally decided to stop doing this as it was so misleading (and not just in English and Spanish).  Back then I could have given you numerous examples, but now I'm afraid they're gone into the mists of history.

Saludos desde Mazatlán


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## former_chomsky_advocate

jdenson said:


> "You and me" as a subject is not informal (it's just wrong), it's not fine, and, although I haven't conducted a survey, I don't think it's used by most people.


It's very common, and it's the usage of object pronouns, rather than subject pronouns, in an intonationally stressed position.

It's the same as "Toi et moi somes arrives aux wherever..."


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## former_chomsky_advocate

> For some reason some English speakers become confused about the correct case to use when there are two pronouns instead of one. But as kevcito points out, it is easy to figure out the correct case simply by forming the same sentence using only one pronoun instead of two. Once you do that you can clearly hear that the objective case is not correct for the subject of the sentence.
> *You and me are the best* may sound OK to you (not to me), but if you say:
> *Me am the best* you will know immediately that is the wrong case.
> The same holds true for the use of the objective case for pronouns used as the object in the sentence.
> *He did it for you and I* may sound OK to many (not to me) but again it is the two pronouns together that cause the confusion. If you say:
> *He did it for I* you can clearly see/hear that *I* is not the correct case.


Nobody is doubting the validity of case position.  There simply is, when in a stressed position, (as under coordination) a tendency to use the stressed variant rather than the unstressed variant.  Spanish uses the subject pronoun for the stressed variant.  English uses the object pronoun.

Entre tu y yo no dirias que es interesante?

AS for your example of "he did it for you and I," it's a straw man argument, a non-occurring set of data used to prove your point, yet it's not data.


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## very

cubaMania said:


> Hi very,
> Sorry it has taken me so long to answer you. (Christmas and all that stuff intervened. Happy Holidays.)
> 
> This is an interesting subject and one addressed in many grammar texts and forums. But before I point you to some of those write-ups, let me use your own words as an example:
> You are trying to compare *You and I/me are the best* to *It is I/me*.
> You correctly point out that most people say *It is me*. However, notice that in your sentence above you say *I am more in agreement*, not *me am more in agreement*. So your own usage confirms that the subject of the sentence is clearly in the subjective case, i.e. *I* not *me*. So kevicito's summary showing *You and I are the best* being correct and *You and me are the best* being incorrect agrees with your own usage.
> 
> *It is I* versus *It is me*, however, is another matter. When the pronoun follows the verb (especially a form of the verb "to be") common English usage does substitute the objective case for the grammatically more formal subjective case:
> 
> 
> Here is another good explanation indicating that both *It is I* and *It is me* are in reputable use:
> 
> 
> But this use of the objective case for pronouns following a form of the verb "to be" has nothing to do with pronouns used as the subject of a sentence. You would never say *Me is the best*. The confusion enters when there are two pronouns together as the subject of the sentence. *You and I are the best* is the only grammatically correct form. There is no special exception for substituting *me* for *I* in such a sentence.
> 
> For some reason some English speakers become confused about the correct case to use when there are two pronouns instead of one. But as kevcito points out, it is easy to figure out the correct case simply by forming the same sentence using only one pronoun instead of two. Once you do that you can clearly hear that the objective case is not correct for the subject of the sentence.
> *You and me are the best* may sound OK to you (not to me), but if you say:
> *Me am the best* you will know immediately that is the wrong case.
> The same holds true for the use of the objective case for pronouns used as the object in the sentence.
> *He did it for you and I* may sound OK to many (not to me) but again it is the two pronouns together that cause the confusion. If you say:
> *He did it for I* you can clearly see/hear that *I* is not the correct case.
> 
> As a note I will add that I have even run across some grammarians writing that *It is I* is not acceptable and that only *It is me* is acceptable. I do believe they are quite a minority, however.
> 
> Though I myself usually use *It is I* because I grew up saying and hearing that form (I'm rather old, you see *) I am aware that in modern English *It is me* predominates and is correct and reputable usage. However, I can tell you that at least in the circles in which I travel, people would whince if they heard *You and me are the best.* To most people of my acquaintance that sounds as jarring as would *Me am the best.*
> 
> I hope that clarifies my point that the grammatical structures you were trying to compare are, in fact, not comparable.
> 
> * I don't feel at all Shakespearian when saying this, but I do feel old.


Hi cubamania, thanks for your detailed explanation.  

All I can say is that in the UK I don't think that "you and me" (in informal contexts) would make anyone cringe... apart from the unhealthily anal.

In the 1970s and 80s there was even a children's educational program on the BBC (who in those days definitely wouldn't have tolerated a cringe-inducing ungrammatically correct program title) called "You and Me", whose theme tune went: "You and me, me and you, lots and lots for us to do".

So maybe there is a transatlantic difference regarding this subject.



jdenson said:


> "You and me" as a subject is not informal (it's just wrong), it's not fine, and, although I haven't conducted a survey, I don't think it's used by most people. In spite of Very's experience, there are many people who cringe when they hear, "him and I went to the movie" and "he gave it to my wife and I". I am often told by friends and associates, people who make hiring decisions at major companies and public instituions, that they rejected a job applicant because of his poor English. Their question is always, "If he is incompetent in his own language, in what else is he incompetent?"
> JD


I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "Him and I" ... "to my wife and I", etc, here. They sound bad to me too... but "You and me" doesn't.
You shouldn't talk on behalf of all English speakers if you're not familiar with how the language is spoken outside the USA. I have stated a few times that I'm talking about usage where I live (in the UK).
By the way, if I were applying for a job as a mechanic or a laboratory technician, I hope I would be judged on my relevant skills and qualifications rather than anything else. An employer who judges a potential employee's competence based on his own inflexible, prescriptivist grammar prejudices is probably not someone I'd personally like to work for (or should that be "for whom I'd like to work" ).


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## cubaMania

very said:


> Hi cubamania, thanks for your detailed explanation.
> 
> All I can say is that in the UK I don't think that "you and me" (in informal contexts) would make anyone cringe... apart from the unhealthily anal.
> 
> In the 1970s and 80s there was even a children's educational program on the BBC (who in those days definitely wouldn't have tolerated a cringe-inducing ungrammatically correct program title) called "You and Me", whose theme tune went: "You and me, me and you, lots and lots for us to do"...


Hi very,
Once again, I have to say that the examples in your response are not the same structure as is being discussed.  There is nothing wrong with "*you and me*" in itself, (así a secas).  It is appropriate when the objective case is appropriate, i.e. when it is the object in the sentence or phrase:
*He did it for you and me* NOT *He did it for you and I*
but it is not appropriate where the subjective case is called for:
*You and I did it for them* NOT *You and me did it for them*
In your response you refer to "you and me" without specifying any context, and the whole point is the context, i.e. whether it in the position of subject or of object.  The same goes for the BBC theme you quote:  it contains neither subject nor object so there is no reason to suppose either *You and I* or *You and me* to be the appropriate case, for we have no information about case, so no reason to cringe.
There is nothing wrong with *You and I* when it is the subject.
There is nothing wrong with *You and me* when it is the object.


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## jabogitlu

> *You and I did it for them* NOT *You and me did it for them*



You're probably right about it not being the latter; I feel it would be more correctly stated as "Me and you did it for them."  Whether or not this is correct grammatically, I feel that your assertion in a previous post that few people use such structures to be fundamentally incorrect.  Perhaps you live among the upper-middle class, or upper class, of society?  I live among the lower and lower/median-middle classes and for them (and me) this compound subject construction is *quite* common.

I can't figure out why hundreds of years ago we didn't abolish such crazy words and reduce nominative and accusative to "I," while relegating possessive to "of I."  It would have made things much simpler.


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## roxcyn

It is common, but then again "I *be* fine" which I have heard from many people could be considered "common" as well.  For me, I do not use this structure and I will indirectly correct others:

You and me did it for them.  
Really?  You and I did what for them? . 

Any who, I know that in informal situations many people make errors.  I was talking with my grandma at her house and she said "I knowed....." many times.  I didn't correct her, but I was very surprised!  So....I think each native speaker does many errors---no one is perfect.


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## Ms Missy

RE: *He did it for you and me* NOT *He did it for you and I*


That's a good point you made cubaMania.  Before I read your post I couldn't think of a single instance when "you and me" would be grammatically correct.  I have a book called "Between You and I.  It's a humorous type book that emphasis "bad English" that's in common usage.  But one thing I really like about it is that the author refers to bad language usage as "uneducated use of the language."  I like that term much better than implying the stigma of bad language to only the uneducated or the lower class of society.  It's a term I can live with since although I'm "educated," I have to admit that there are some aspects of the language that I might be "uneducated" about.  So I visit the forums to learn as well as to share.   

Thanks!

PS.  roxyn:  My grandma also says "I knowed" (among other things), and I dare not try to correct her.  Once when I tried to correct my mom on saying "she doesn't" instead of "she don't"  ... she didn't appreciate it one bit.  She said that she had taught me how to talk as a child, but now that I'm grown I have the nerve to try and teach her how to talk!  

Well that was the end of that!


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## cubaMania

Ms Missy said:


> ...Before I read your post I couldn't think of a single instance when "you and me" would be grammatically correct. I have a book called "Between You and I...


Yes, Ms. Missy, I do think that the confusion about the proper case when two pronouns are used stems in part from exactly this type of hypercorrection.  Somebody says "You and me are going to the store."  They get corrected (appropriately) and are told they must say "You and I are going to the store."  Then they start using "you and I" instead of "you and me" in sentences where it is the object not the subject: "This is just between you and I."  They have hypercorrected and thus made another error in grammar.  Instead of thinking "You and I" is incorrect, what they needed to realize is the "you and I" is incorrect in the role of object and "you and me" is incorrect in the role of subject.  And vice versa--"you and I" is correct in the role of subject and "you and me" is correct in the role of object.

Here's how one grammarian explains this type of hypercorrection:


> _Hypercorrection_ means being so concerned with getting the grammar right that you get it wrong. For instance, we have it drilled into our heads that "Me and him went to the game" is wrong; it should be "_He and I_ went to the game." Too many people end up thinking "He and I" is therefore more proper, and use it in inappropriate places, like "A message came for he and I" — it should be "A message came for _him and me_."


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## Ms Missy

cubaMania, I know exactly what you mean about the hypercorrection! I remember one case in particular when I was speaking with an employee and I said, "_If I were you_ I would tell her such and such." And the response was, "Well _I were trying_ but she won't listen to anything I say."


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## jabogitlu

> PS. roxyn: My grandma also says "I knowed" (among other things), and I dare not try to correct her. Once when I tried to correct my mom on saying "she doesn't" instead of "she don't" ... she didn't appreciate it one bit. She said that she had taught me how to talk as a child, but now that I'm grown I have the nerve to try and teach her how to talk!



I encounter this as well, often, living in Appalachia.  I've developed a stance where I try to make sure people I care about know correct use of the language, whether they use it or not.  I think the various regional quirks of any language are vital to its overall health, but I also think it's important to be able to speak whatever version has been ordained "proper," for whatever reason, so that we can A) mutually communicate and B) appear enlightened, educated, and intelligent.

Whenever I'm here at home, the way I talk would probably be both unintelligible and cringe-worthy, but when I am at university, abroad, or in other parts of North America, I try as best I can to talk properly.  (I also do this for ESL, as I know from experience with Spanish just how difficult deciphering colloquialisms and off-center pronunciation can be!)


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