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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery Post Reply
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montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4588 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 217 of 221
25 April 2013 at 12:42am | IP Logged 
patrickwilken wrote:
emk wrote:
luke wrote:
John, Mary, and myself are coming.
(wrong)

John, Mary and I are coming. (correct)

For anyone, the easy way to remember this, is to isolate the (I/me/myself) word from
the list, and notice which is correct.

Note that this rule works fine in standard English, but will give you a horribly
incorrect answer in French.


My grammar is horrible, but isn't the correct rule simply that in English, like in
German, the verb 'to be' takes the nomative case, as there is seen to be an equivalence
between the subject and the object of the sentence?

So 'Ich bin ich' is correct, rather than 'Ich bin mich', and likewise 'I am I' is
correct, rather than 'I am me'.



I think you are technically correct, but evidently (as emk tells us), French is
different, since one can say "c'est moi".

But in colloquial speech in English we also often say (e.g. on the phone) "[Hi,] it's
me ".   So we break our own "rules", which is again more or less what emk was saying.


1 person has voted this message useful



Itadakimasu
Diglot
Newbie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3949 days ago

31 posts - 82 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese

 
 Message 218 of 221
07 June 2013 at 7:02am | IP Logged 
Anyone who says natives speak correctly all the time is simply being ignorant. I speak wrong all the time. Oh look, that sentence was wrong, it was "Incorrect". Hah, that's a laugh. I can't remember the last time I heard someone in actual speech say "incorrect". You may hear it in books, or some false documents, but anyone whose spent time in the UK or America or has done massive English input via computer knows that people don't speak like that. I could purposely mess up all my sentences, and because you guys are natives you could understand me fine. Just like a kid has no idea of these rules and still communicates effectively the same goes for a foreigner. For some reason people think you need this damn near "angelic perfection" or grammar, syn-taxes, and verb conjugations to be able to speak. This is what holds people back.
6 persons have voted this message useful



jeronz
Diglot
Newbie
New Zealand
Joined 4618 days ago

37 posts - 79 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Yiddish, Latin, German, Italian

 
 Message 219 of 221
18 July 2013 at 7:28pm | IP Logged 
liammcg wrote:
luke wrote:
casamata wrote:
And yes, natives pretty much
always speak
"grammatically" correct.


The "pretty much" qualifier is important. A native may say, "I aks you to come" and it
is not grammatically correct and has a pronunciation error. (I asked you to come.)

Also, here is a common grammatical error in English. My stupidvisor wrote it in an
email just last week. And lest anyone think I'm being pedantic, I overheard the mother
of a very intelligent 5 year old correct him for this error.

John, Mary, and myself are coming. (wrong)

John, Mary and I are coming. (correct)

For anyone, the easy way to remember this, is to isolate the (I/me/myself) word from
the list, and notice which is correct. (I am coming, not "myself am coming" or "me am
coming"). The later "John, Mary, and me are coming" is more common and one could argue
that it is a correct informal usage, but that's a bit of a stretch. The "John, Mary,
and myself are coming" is still recognized as incorrect. This is especially true in
that I've heard people use it in formal situations, such as business email, and I know
my stupidvisor is just stupid and not being informal, and I've also heard it in The
Apprentice Boardroom when contestants are doing their very best to defend themselves
and sound intelligent and credible. That don't make it right. :)


In writing, I would use the 'correct form' using the word I. In speaking however, I
would almost always use 'me' or even 'meself' (!) because of my dialect. Sure,
according to the standard language my usage is wrong, but I believe it's a perfectly
correct usage of the language. People communicate like this all the time in Ireland,
it's a fully excepted norm (in the west anyway). Of course when people felt the need to
abandon Gaelic and learn English, it would have been wrong for them as T2 speakers, but
it was obviously widespread enough so that the next generation of native English
speakers used it without a second thought.

If I began speaking using sentences like "John, Mary and I are going", people would
think that you're acting posh...no really!


I have studied all of Professor John McWhorter's three courses on linguistics from
thegreatcourses.com and I feel I should chime in here regarding this issue as to what
the mainstream contemporary view is:

John, Mary and me are going is CORRECT. That it should be otherwise is based
on the idea that English should be more like Latin.

The notion that it needs to be John, Mary and I are going comes from a man called
Robert Lowth who wrote an English Grammar in the 1700s. His premise was that English
should be more like Latin. He therefore made up several rules as to how we should
thenceforth speak English, this is called prescriptivism.

The technical thing he insisted on is to have the subject pronoun form instead of the
object pronoun form. He insisted on this because in Latin it would be the nominitive
form. Note that no-one was speaking like this before he came up with these
rules, and NO child speaks like this before they are "taught" in school. Not to mention
that to import grammar rules artificially like that from one language to another is
just crazy. Especially as many languages such as French use the object pronoun and no
one in those societies complains about that.

He also insisted on having the subject form even in sentences such as "It is I", "It is
they" or "It is we" Note how no-one would insist on someone using these
sentences. These sentences just don't work, they don't sound right. Why for John, Mary
and I ? And then how come most people wouldn't object to "Me, John and Mary," but
something like "I, John and Mary" just doesn't sound right at all.

Basically in conclusion, what we are taught in school is not logical and it is not the
language we speak as a child before we are "corrected" in school. However in
formal settings you should still say "John, Mary and I are going" because that
is the accepted thing. However no-one should say that this is in anyway logical.

Edited by jeronz on 23 July 2013 at 4:15am

9 persons have voted this message useful



lingoleng
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5058 days ago

605 posts - 1290 votes 

 
 Message 220 of 221
19 July 2013 at 7:23am | IP Logged 
jeronz wrote:
... it is not the language we speak as a child before we are "corrected" in school.

So what you are saying is that 5-year-old children are the ones who speak pure, uncorrupted English and should be the only legitimate normative force? Is that because they had less time to deviate from the universal inborn grammar?

Edited by lingoleng on 19 July 2013 at 7:25am

1 person has voted this message useful



jeronz
Diglot
Newbie
New Zealand
Joined 4618 days ago

37 posts - 79 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Yiddish, Latin, German, Italian

 
 Message 221 of 221
23 July 2013 at 4:15am | IP Logged 
lingoleng wrote:
jeronz wrote:
... it is not the language we speak as a child before
we are "corrected" in school.

So what you are saying is that 5-year-old children are the ones who speak pure,
uncorrupted English and should be the only legitimate normative force? Is that because
they had less time to deviate from the universal inborn grammar?


What is "natural" really comes down to how a language is spoken on a day to day basis.
Robert Lowth's legacy has resulted in generations of teachers attempting to
artificially change English to be more like Latin. Yes, languages do change and evolve,
however the fact remains that most parents are still teaching their children to use the
object pronoun.

If most English speakers started using the subject pronoun then that would be more
correct, but the fact is that, when speaking, most people don't. It has nothing to do
with universal grammar, it is simply the English that you learn "on your mother's
knee." This doesn't have anything to do with an inborn universal grammar.

In formal settings the subject pronoun is more accepted and so one should go with that
in those circumstances.


1 person has voted this message useful



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