Comments on: Is it I or me?

By: sentimancho

sentimancho — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 09:02:00 +0000

I love your blog, very nice colors & theme. Did you make this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you? Plz reply as I’m looking to design my own blog and would like to know where u got this from. thanks a lot

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:36:16 +0000

What about Latin? Almost all of English grammar mirrors in some way the dead old tongue, and in this case what would matter is the declension of the noun.

Latin declines nouns thusly:

Nominative (subject)
Genitive (possessory)
Dative (indirect object)
Accusative (direct object, usually involving motion “ad infinitum”)
Ablative (various prepositional phrases)

What you have here in “it is I” is a predicate nominative.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:16:16 +0000

Hi…interesting chat!
What would you say about ‘That is me’? (eg when looking at a picture of yourself) Is the ‘me’ grammatically correct? Or just consistent…’That is I’ sounds odder than ‘It is I’ …even though I always say it to be grammatically correct.
Charlie

By: rbeard

rbeard — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:38:01 +0000

You would enjoy talking with my wife.

By: 1365 Buena Vista Road

1365 Buena Vista Road — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:38:44 +0000

I really love to say “It is I,” and I always correct people.

By: RaymonWazerri

RaymonWazerri — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:18:03 +0000

Hey,
I love what you’e doing!
Don’t ever change and best of luck.

Raymon W.

By: rbeard

rbeard — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 01:11:51 +0000

I have never discussed English words borrowed by other languages. Maybe I will give some thought to that. My favorites so far have been those words whose English plural is ignored by foreign languages that add their own plural like джинсы [jins-y] “jeans”. The -y is the Russian plural. Since Russian also pluralizes objects with mirror-image parts (glasses, scissors, pants), “jeans” must be plural. However, -s is not a plural marker in Russian, so it is ignored. Keks-y “crackers” based on English “cake” is another example.

By: сноуборд

сноуборд — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:39:45 +0000

сноуборд it would be interesting

By: Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira

Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 19:52:59 +0000

French, as well as other Romance languages, distinguishes between accusative and dative in the third person singular and plural:

nominative accusative dative
je me me
tu te te
il le lui
elle la lui
nous nous nous
vous vous vous
ils/elles les leur

Macedonian, not having cases, uses clitics, which makes word order rather free (not as free as Russian, but much freer than English):

Ivan go vidi na Boris.
Na Boris Ivan go vidi.
Na Boris go vidi Ivan.

In which go is the clitic that agrees with Ivan, a masculine noun, and na introduces the direct object, when determined. Not very different from Spanish

Ivan vio a Boris.
A Boris vio Ivan.
A Boris Ivan vio.

and Romanian

Ivan l-a vazut pe Boris.
Pe Boris l-a vazut Ivan.
Pe Boris Ivan l-a vazut.

In which a (in Spanish) and pe (in Romanian) introduce the direct object, which must be determined, as in Macedonian.

By: rbeard

rbeard — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:59:56 +0000

Larry,

It is one thing if you say it automatically; that means that you are applying the a ~ an rule when the [h] isn’t there. This is the way grammatical rules operate, unconsciously. It is another altogether when we become conscious of the conflict and do it because we are worried about speaking English the right way.

“An historical” in most instances in the US is the result of the impact editors have on the way we write.