Personally, I and I blame it on the Rastafarians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastafarian_vocabulary

Bugsy,

I am concerned about it because I find it jarring. When one is listening to someone talk, or reads something, one has to fit what one encounters into one's internalised model of the language in order to understand it. Without that, it's just a jumble of words. If it doesn't fit the model naturally, it requires a sort of double-take to fit it into the model allowing for errors.

In time, I suppose, my internalised model will adapt to accept these incorrect forms, and I'll no longer notice them. Except that as long as the error continues to expand across the language, the model will never be current.

As something of an aside, I encountered the following

"Hawley has since moved out of the multi-million dollar Greenwich pile that is home to he and Antonia's children..."

in a Daily Telegraph article today. Now, it may just be a mistake, but I wonder whether the "between you and I" effect is now contaminating this kind of sentence as well. I'll leave as an exercise to the reader to determine what's wrong with it, and what it should say instead ;)

Sylvia.

Bugsy, we should be concerned as our language, which evolved and spread all over for hundreds of years, is now degenerating towards a state where it will be unintelligible to those who do not use the same slang or bad grammar, “know what I’m sayin’?” The pronoun misuse is but part of the disease.

Another example of the “she goes” type of bad grammar is the “I was like” instead of “I said”. This one comes up all over. The so-called stars of TV and film almost always talk that way.

Another thing I have noticed is the amount of times people say “um”, using it almost as part of a sentence. Even experts talking on their own subject have a high “um factor”. Lately, TV interviewers have also succumbed and "um" their way along.

Quote from Judge Judy, "Um is not an answer".

Even newspaper journalists are assaulting grammar with gems such as starting a sentence (in print) with “Hey”.

Our language is in danger.

Um, if anything the history of language has taught us anything it's that it takes on a life of it's after a fashion. It evolves. When the majority of a people use the pronouns in that particular manner, then it will become the "correct" usage, if only within a dialect to start with.

One person's disease is another's evolutionary mechanism. You and your ilk trying to preserve a 'pure' language are like King Canute on this score. Relax, there's nothing you can do about it.

Bugsy, your view is typical of the lazy attitude that is affecting language. It's not a question of "pure" language, as new words must be adopted for new inventions and concepts but you seriously can't think that the backward slide of grammar etc. is language evolving.

If everyone invents their own rules for language, we won't end up with new dialects, just a population that can't communicate with each other.

While dialects have certain pronouncation differences and words unique to them, the basics of the language are steady. That's why English, Americans and Australians can mutually understand each other. We have the same basic rules.

Lazy attitude? I prefer to think that I have confidence that we will not lose the ability to understand each other, that's just hyperbole. We already have custodians of the rules of language in educational and publishing institutions, you need not fear. Cries of "We are losing our language!" is more often than not merely the lament of the pedant.