The Forum > General Discussion > What's happening to our pronouns?
What's happening to our pronouns?
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That's a bit problematic to start with, as "I" is always a subject pronoun, never direct or indirect object (that's "me").
>>I can't remember exactly what the show's character, Melanie, said, but it was something like "Do you want Jim and I to do it?"
This appears to have started in the USA. I first became aware of it years ago in the expression "between you and I" but it's spreading, both geographically, beyond the USA, and into other parts of the language.
Yes, that's not correct in the strict grammatical sense as we should have "me" as an object pronoun; but note that both expressions have "and" -two nouns coordinated, not just one pronoun.
>>I have yet to hear anyone say something like "Do you want I to do it?", any more than we hear people say "Did you give it to I?" I suspect that what we're really seeing is a move towards using subject form pronouns in object positions only when linked by conjunctions, or perhaps only with the conjunction "and".
Yes, good observation.
>>Add to that the use of object form pronouns in subject positions, "Me and Fred went to the shops" - which is similar to something I heard Delta Goodrem say in an interview - and it's becoming a total mess. Again, I haven't heard anyone say something like "Me went to the shops".
Yes, but here I don't think that "me" is to be taken as an object pronoun, rather as an emphatic pronoun (a bit like "moi" in French); it's colloquial, but people have been saying that in spoken language for ages. Typically, their mothers correct them and model what the Queen says ("my husband and I...").
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