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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 25 of 34 04 February 2012 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
For the exact same reasons why "John and I" is correct in English. "Je" is the French pronoun that corresponds to the English "I", whereas "moi" corresponds to "me". Of course, "Jean et moi" is actually the correct usage in French, as anybody who has studied the language knows. But if that can be correct in French, why can it not be correct in English? There's no difference here, and that's why claiming "me and John" as incorrect has no linguistic basis. Rather, it's something made up by someone who didn't know how language works, and who managed to convince a bunch of other people that the way they speak is wrong. Then suddenly there was this "rule", and I bet Strunk and White wrote it in their preposterous little book and suddenly everyone tried their best to adapt their language to this new rule. Only in English do these kinds of things happen. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 26 of 34 04 February 2012 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
@dear Chimp,
Right, that's wrong again (past perfect = had + past participle). Thanks for pointing that out, less well-informed readers could get it wrong. After checking the thread, the whole thing happened because IronFist said "perfect past" and then referred to [mis]uses of the present perfect (have/has + participle), an obvious, perfectly excusable slip-up of his that I overlooked myself. However, it is not wronger than wrong, nor is being wrong something exclusive of ours...
so far, assuming past = past simple, so good...
Wrong. No matter how you spin this, "have gone" is present perfect, i.e. something that happened (or could have happened, in the example we're discussing) before something else, which also happened in the past. Adding the modal "should" changes its mood, but only slightly its meaning (every mood change is a meaning change of sorts) and certainly not the tenses themselves or their relationships, just like putting "would" or "ought to" there would do.
Wrong again. First and firstly, "have" means exactly the same thing here as everywhere else. "Have/had" + participle adds the perfective aspect to the main verb in the present or in the past and that's it. Then modal verbs may change the mood or shift the whole thing in time (f.ex. add "will") as I said, but they do not essentially change the meaning, anywhere. Maybe you want to check your sources. Second, when speakers of any language misspell things like this, it is a clear, tell-tale sign that they're paying little or no attention to the actual meaning of what they say and they are merely playing by ear -- and getting it wrong. Obviously this happens even more easily in the case of [near-]homophones. Edit: tommus had gone over this already, sorry for the hammering. Another [in]famous example in Spanish is "voy a ver"; especially among teenagers it's frequent to see "voy haber" written -- that doesn't make any sense at all.
OK, some more "t" dotting and "i" crossing... :) -What type what pronouns are and how they are supposed to be used was established long before I and -presumably- you were born. I merely cited the definitions, and thus I'm not claiming that anybody, let alone "all native speakers" speak incorrectly. -Languages 'rules' are (usually) the prescriptive formalization of the way a vast majority of speakers speak, and of course that may change, but in the case at hand it simply hasn't happened yet, even if language rules are maybe the easiest to change. But, for your information, when there are rules of any kind, people who do things against them are wrong by definition. If you don't like rules, or the ones that govern another language (a truly fascinating question in itself), well, don't look at me, that ball is in your court. Edited by mrwarper on 04 February 2012 at 10:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 27 of 34 04 February 2012 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Ari, long time no-cross! :)
So, I guessed it...
Well, the thing is, different conventions are adopted (and sometimes formalized) as rules in different languages, so I see why "me" as a subject is 'wrong' in English, but I can't see why nor why not do it in French, which I haven't studied. Are there any normative French entities prescribing the use of "et je" or "et moi" as subject?
In the planet of the apes, knowing about something and being 'in charge' are less correlated than one would think... ;)
Not really, but normative entities or normative wannabes can make a difference and sometimes they do, even in the wrong direction. I mention this because some here may think that I am a very strong prescriptivist, but this is not true. I'm only in the prescriptivist camp when prescriptions make sense, and against otherwise. F.e. I also strongly oppose the latest reforms proposed by the RAE some 10 years ago -- there were strong reasons for the previous statu quo and very little for a change in the proposed direction, but I'll leave details on that for some other thread. Anyway... using "subject pronouns" or "object pronouns" for multiple subjects is equally arbitrary to me (because the definition is in itself arbitrary), but I think it makes way less sense to use a mix of the two, i.e. say "they and me" instead "they and I" or "them and me" in every language, unless you tell me there's a reason to do it. This could be anything, like choosing every other type for "the first/last one", "those preceded by a preposition", or whatever, as long as it makes *some* sense. However, I wonder where these 'right' mixed picks come from, besides actual rules like the ones I just made up. (If someone think this belongs to another thread, please start it). Could it be a cross-linguistic contamination from languages where some subject and object pronouns are the same? I mean, I think the 'wrong' use of 'You and me' as a subject in English may have its origin in the fact that "you and me" is the right object construction and "you" can be both a subject and an object, so I can easily conceive people take it from 'valid' constructions like "for you and me" and misplace it as subject in others. I wonder, are there any examples of such 'mixed picks' where no equal subject/object could originate them? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 28 of 34 04 February 2012 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
If you follow that logic, why would anything be different from one language to another, why can we not just translate word for word, idioms and all, from one language to another? Languages are living, breathing animals. Knowing how grammar works in one language, says nothing about how it works in another language. In related languages, it can help you make an educated guess, but otherwise, it's a new game in town for every language you learn. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| FELlX Diglot Groupie France Joined 4771 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 29 of 34 05 February 2012 at 12:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 30 of 34 05 February 2012 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Not that I know of. "Jean et je" is pretty much unheard of, as far as I know.
Too true, though nobody is really "in charge" of English. Rather, it's a matter of being persuasive. Like the unfortunate essay by Orson Welles where he admonishes writers against using the passive voice, and in the process uses it with a significantly higher frequency than in general usage.
Well, French. If you ask me, I suspect that the "me and John" construction in English has its roots in French influence. And there's nothing wrong with these constructions. Language doesn't work by specifying a bunch of rules and following them. Irregularities are extremely common, especially in frequent constructions like these. You can't say "me and John" is wrong because it violates logic, because "me" is an object pronoun and not a subject pronoun. You'd have to remake the entire language! No more "good, better, the best"; it should be "good, gooder, the goodest", because that's how comparatives work in English. And surely you can't say "I am not a linguist". English verbs are negated by "do not". You have "I swim" vs. "I don't swim", "I laugh" vs. "I don't laugh". By logic, we must conclude that the negative of "I am" must be "I don't am". Or maybe "I don't be", since the first person singular present form of a verb is the same as the nominative, right? Everybody knows that English is chock full of exceptions and irregularities, but somehow the irregularity of "John and me went to the store" is deemed unacceptable because it's illogical. I suspect that the case here is that both usages have coexisted for hundreds of years, "John and I" from the Germanic origins of English and "me and John" from French influence. But there is a sort of people who cannot tolerate diversity. Where there are two ways of saying something, one must be wrong. They can't both be right. Which one is right is arbitrary, but as one can make a rule by looking at object and subject, that one was easier to push on people, and the crusade to rid the language of diversity was started. Okay, I exaggerate for comic effect, and I hope I'm not offending people here. But the many ambiguities, synonyms, variance and irregularities of English is something I love about the language. The greatest prose and poetry of English feeds on this and thrives on it. People express their identity through it. Writers express subtle nuances by it. Speakers mark levels of formality with it. These little differences make English a wonderful language. Being able to express the same thing in two different ways is very important, which is why I always get a little cranky when some people walk around telling others that only one of these ways is correct and the others are wrong. When confronted with the fact that English can express this as "Me and John" or as "John and I" we should be happy, not angry. We could ask ourselves what the subtle differences are, when to use one and when to use the other. We might note that one is more common in casual speech and the other in writing. What we should not do is decide on which one is wrong and stigmatize it. Nothing good will come of that. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 31 of 34 05 February 2012 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 32 of 34 05 February 2012 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Thing is, the argument was based on logical reasoning. The argument goes "since 'me' is the object pronoun and 'I' is the subject pronoun, and 'John and X' is in the subject position, X must be 'I' and not 'me'". The exact same argument can be made in French. In French, nothing says that the object pronoun "moi" can't be used in a subject position, but for some reason in English this must be wrong? If it's possible in French, it's possible in other languages. I'm not saying it must be the same way in English as in French, I'm saying if it's possible in one language, it's possible in another. Therefore, the argument in question fails. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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