Philip Newton&#39;s journal

does she hear spoken, "native" English a lot outside of you?

Not really, no.

Her English input is essentially from me, the English-speaking teacher in her kindergarten group, and an occasional English-language DVD. So I'm probably the biggest influence on her English.

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Huh, I thought I would mess up your results, but it seems like everyone agrees with me. I favour "me" (I also also favour me, but egoism aside). It is probably direct transfer from Norwegian. In Norway the objectform "meg" has more or less totally supplanted the suject-form "(j)eg", both in speaking and writing. And since Norwegian is a country of frequent langauge reforms, it is also allowed in writing (when teaching that is - everyone is free to write however they like outside school).

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In Norway the objectform "meg" has more or less totally supplanted the suject-form "(j)eg", both in speaking and writing.

Interesting; I didn't know that.

Reminds me of how "lui" and "lei" (object) all but replaced "ello(?)" and "ella" (subject) in Italian. I can't think of another case off the top of my head, but accusatives do seem more "robust" than nominatives, for some reason... (for example, I think the noun forms in modern Romance languages typically developed from the accusative, not the nominative, in Vulgar Latin).

So you can say "meg elsker deg", for example?

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No, sorry, as I said below, I meant in cases like this, when you have a presentation with "det" like "det er meg" or a comparison "jeg er bedre enn deg".

But, as said, pronouns in Norwegian is complicated and confusing, and a lot of things are done (and therefore allowed) depending on your dialect.

I have these forms when I speak
(subj) eg, du, han, hon, den/det* // vi, dåkkar (dial. for dere), de
(obj) meg, deg, han, hon, den/det //oss, dåkkar, de
* I tend fluctuate between using "den" for masc objects like in bokmål, and sometimes I use "an" (for han) for masc objects which is more common in Western Norway (There are probably some rules to when, but I haven't thought much about it)

So I say "Eg snakker med deg"
"Han elsker hon/han"

One of my friends is from the south of NOrway and don't use the objectsform at all and says things like
"Jeg snakker med du"
"De snakker med vi"

Another of my friends is from the east, and whereas he has the singual forms in both subj and obj, the plural forms are all taken from the objectforms;
"Oss snakker med dem" (oss is sucj here)
"Dem snakker med oss" (Dem is subject)

Confusing?

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Interesting; thanks!

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Usually this is about the time when my students start rolling their eyes and checking their mobile phones.

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Different strokes for different folks; I love hearing about this sort of stuff.

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That's interesting - I'm trying to learn Norwegian but I very rarely see "meg" - it's almost always "jeg". I guess learning materials do tend to prefer a more traditional/formal approach to things. Can "meg" always be used to replace "jeg"? If not, could you give me a few examples of when it can and can't be used?:)

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No, sorry, I meant just in sentences like these, sentences that starts with a presentation like "det er..." "det er meg" and after comparisions "Pål er større enn meg".

"Jeg" is still the standard subjectform, (and in some dialect it has also supplanted the objectforms. On the other hand, in some dialects the objectforms have supplanted the subjectforms. I never say the objectforms ham/henne, although I may write it, I use han/hon - but this is another long and confusing lecture on dialects in Norway :)

ETA: Which you now can read a bit about above.

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Interesting - a little too complicated for my current level, but still interesting!:) I have heard lots of stories about the variations in dialects - one of my friends is from Trondheim, lives in Oslo, is married to a girl who is from another part of the country (don't know exactly where - I know it's a mountainous region, and is about 2 hours from Oslo, but that hardly narrows it down much!:p), and travels all over the country with work, so I can barely understand a word he says!

Last time I was over there, I saw some guys who looked and sounded somewhat unusual - their speech sounded like Norwegian but with a lot of words I couldn't pick out (not that I can pick out much at the best of times). I thought they might be Swedish, but I was assured by another friend "no, they're not Swedish, they're from Trondheim, but there's not much difference" (and he's from Trondheim himself!!

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damnitnicole

There are cases when object form is grammatically correct, but I can't remember enough from growing up in a house full of teachers to say just when. :(

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alsatia.livejournal.com

I didn't answer the question about what form to use because none of the answers fit. Subject form goes in the subject of a sentence and object form goes in the object of a sentence.

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muckefuck.livejournal.com

This only begs the question of what's a "subject" or "subject form" and what's an "object" or "object form". In colloquial English, only historically objective forms appear after the copula. (Sure, some people say, "It is I", but have you ever in your life heard someone say, "It is we"?) Therefore it must be a transitive verb, right?

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leora.livejournal.com

I was taught that direct objects answer the question of what or who.

It is ____

what follows answers the question of what it is or who it is.

An indirect object answers the question of to where or to whom, such as:
I gave the ball to him.
ball is a direct object and him is an indirect object.

I have been told that other languages use terms like dative and genitive and such that I can never remember what they mean as it wasn't the way I was taught and that the way I was taught was horrible. But it does seem to work pretty well.

You use I when you'd be following it with a verb, causing it to be a subject or when the verb is assumed to follow it but you don't actually say it.

It is I is far more poetic than it is proper formal grammar. It sounds dramatic, not like something people properly say. It's me, however, sounds very natural. At least, to me.

However, I did not formally study linguistics, and I could be wrong about things.

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muckefuck.livejournal.com

Since she's a German-English bilingual, using "I" in all of those contexts wouldn't sound "stuffy" to me as much as "non-native". For that reason alone, I'd teach her the colloquial forms.

BTW, "am I" is never correct in contemporary English outside of question inversion. Little Jack Horner could get away with "What a good boy am I!" but Amy couldn't.

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quinctia

Even in third person, you're going to sound stilted using the nominative, unless you add the verb. Which is leading me to think it's probably not wrong. Granted, English's grammar rules are muddier to me than Romance languages, because the conjugation and declension of the words is half-nonexistant.

Tom is bigger than her. Tom is bigger than she is.

Paul isn't as smart as her. Paul isn't as smart as she is.

This is Joe and this is her and this is Paul.

Who's that? That's her.

One of the coping mechanisms I came up with, growing up as a Midwestern kid with an ever-expanding vocabulary, was to keep on using a few incorrect grammar quirks, like "me and so-and-so" vs. "so-and-so and I," or ending a sentence with a preposition "I wanna go with." Mostly because I didn't want to sound like a pretentious robot when speaking.

But like I said, I don't believe any of my above picks are wrong.

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karen2205

In the examples you've given the subject form without a verb on the end just looks wrong to me - the kind of thing someone would say if trying to be formal and not knowing how to be - like over use of 'myself' when you mean 'I' or 'me'.

I suppose the important one where it's correct to use the subject form are sentences like 'Mummy, Daddy and I went to the shops'.

In the sentence Look at this picture! This is Joe and this _______ and this is Paul. I think the correct form is "This is Joe, this is Paul and this is me" - ie. always reference yourself last when giving a list of people.

Who wants some cake - could be either 'me' or 'I do'.

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In the sentence Look at this picture! This is Joe and this _______ and this is Paul. I think the correct form is "This is Joe, this is Paul and this is me" - ie. always reference yourself last when giving a list of people.

Ah, I was thinking of going from left to right (or right to left) when identifying people next to each other in a picture.

(Since the picture that prompted this had Nea, Amy, and Anne, in that order from left to right, though she named them from right to left.)

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I suppose the important one where it's correct to use the subject form are sentences like 'Mummy, Daddy and I went to the shops'.

Ah, yes. "Tom and me went to the cinema" irks me more than "Tom is bigger than me".

And "Give the book back to Mummy and I" is even worse, since it's not even natural (for most people); it's a hypercorrection.

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kake

Since you're interested in forms that don't sound stilted — I wouldn't say "Tom and me went to the cinema", because that sounds wrong; I'd be more likely to say "Me and Tom went to the cinema", though the most likely would be "I went to the cinema with Tom". I might write "Tom and I went to the cinema", but I'd be very unlikely to say it.

Also, I'd use "that's" rather than "this is" for the picture example.

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sparkofcreation.livejournal.com

For many of them (Tom, Paul, cake) I would be only slightly more likely to say "me" than "I [verb]" (I am, I do) ... maybe 60/40.

BTW I looked this up in the Chicago Manual of Style and it says this:

Only the first- and most third-person pronouns show a change of case (the second-person you and third-person it keeping the same form as both subject and object, just as nouns do). In fact, the English language has only seven words that have different nominative and objective forms: I/me, we/us, he/him, she/her, they/them, who/whom, and whoever/whomever. A pronoun in the nominative case is either the subject of a verb {I like this china} {he has good posture} or, especially in formal English, a predicate nominative (after a linking verb) {this is he} {it was she who recommended the books}. (See 5.101.) A pronoun in the objective case is either the object of a verb {the crowd liked her} or the object of a preposition {the teachers were beside her}. In less formal English, pronouns in the objective case often encroach on the strictly correct nominative form in the predicate {it was her}. The opposite trend can be seen with an interrogative pronoun at the beginning of the sentence {Who are you going with?}. Grammarians believe that this gradual shift in the language, now ensconced in informal usage, has resulted from a widespread sense among speakers of English that the beginning of a sentence is “subject territory,” whereas the end of a sentence is “object territory.” And, of course, the irregularity of pronoun cases—there being so few in English—is not conducive to maintaining all the distinctions in the long term. But formal writers and speakers do maintain most of them strictly and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

But of course one rarely uses pronouns, especially not first-person pronouns, in formal writing anyway, so I don't see that as a concern here.

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entirelysonja.livejournal.com

But of course one rarely uses pronouns, especially not first-person pronouns, in formal writing anyway, so I don't see that as a concern here.

I agree. The only time I can think of when one would use first-person pronouns in formal writing would be in college or job applications.

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leora.livejournal.com

I don't like the radio buttons... in several of them more than one of your options is fine, but some of them simply are not, as far as I'm concerned. I picked the one I would be most likely to say in each case, even when there are others I might use and would be okay with.

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I agree - for the first two I could say "me" or "I am", for the cake question I could say "me" or "I do", and for the window question I could answer either "Not me!" or "It wasn't me!", but I chose "'Tweren't me!" 'cause I'm Northern and say things like that (though usually shortened even further to "wan't me")!

After looking at the results, I think the whole thing could be answered by "Use 'I' when in formal situations, but most people use 'me' most of the time".

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leora.livejournal.com

Well, there are cases where I think "I" is just plain wrong.

Such as: Who is in this picture? This is Joe, and this is Sue, and this is I.

No, it's wrong.

You wouldn't say: This is Joe and this is she. You'd say this is her.

I am fairly sure it's not just that we informally use "me" but also formally and correctly.

For who wants the cake? I am fine with either, "me" or "I do", but "me" is distinctly juvenile to me. It's something a child or someone acting more like a child would say. "I do" is the grown up option.

I expect that that sort of subjective interpretation is highly regional and variable.

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Yes, there are certainly times and places where "I" doesn't work, but as a generalisation - where it can be used without sounding stupid, it sounds more formal than using "me". I agree about the cake thing, actually, it can sound childish - I think it would depend on the scenario.

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pthalo

yeah, but in Amie's case, where is she going to learn formal English? You learn informal English from your parents (just like in German you learn to use the Du form with them) and you learn formal English from your teachers and the other adults in your environment, the ones you address as Mr. Jones. Philip using formal English with Amie would be like him calling her "Sie", which is...weird. But then, she doesn't have any one else to learn it from... but that's okay, because she will learn it eventually, probably when she's much older. Most of us don't learn formal English until we're much older anyway, and being unable to speak informal English will mark her as a non native speaker and will make it more difficult to fit in with her (currently non-existant) native speaker peers.

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