this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (7 children)

No one says "me are going", but lots of people say "me and X are going", indicating that for native speakers, coordination of noun phrases functions differently than a single noun phrase.

In a contrasting case, people might think the phrase "I and John are here" sounds wrong, though they'd accept "John and I are here." If you're going by the "pure grammar" rule of "remove one subject from the phrase and check the grammar", you'd have to accept either of those as equally viable, but many people don't.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

Close but not quite: the correct grammar is to always mention yourself last (with second person coming first if present in the sentence and then third person) and, as you say, use I or me depending on which one it would be if the others weren't in the sentence.

Wrong

"Me and Dave are going spelunking"

"Remember that Dave, you, and I are going spelunking"

"This is a picture of Dave and I spelunking"

Right

"Dave and I are going spelunking"

"Remember that you, Dave, and I are going spelunking"

"This is a picture of Dave and me spelunking"

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

the correct grammar is to always mention yourself last

That was exactly why I mentioned this case. What exactly separates the grammar of "I (and Dave) am going" vs "Dave (and I) is going"? They're both "subject plus verb", indicating that the order of the coordinations is a matter of style, not grammar.

As to the subjective vs objective cases, the reasons I brought that up is that grammar seeks to explain the rules of language as native speakers use it. Therefore, the only "wrong" grammar is constructions that natives wouldn't use, such as (eg) mimicking a Japanese grammar structure and saying "I the house to go." Since native speakers often use cases like "Me and Dave are going spelunking", it's not wrong, merely a different register of speaking.

Accepting only prestige dialects as "correct" grammar is why people continue to think things like "black people don't speak right", despite the fact that African American English has the same consistency of grammar that the prestige dialect does.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I would encourage people to code switch rather than adhere to one style of language over another in every case. Imho, it's kind of problematic that language itself has become racialized in America to the point where people can actually be criticized or made fun of for speaking in the "wrong" style associated with their perceived ethnic background.

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