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Thread: "You and me" with "you and I"

  1. #1
    Nicky_K is offline Junior Member
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    Default "You and me" with "you and I"

    Lady Gaga sings "you and me could write a bad romance"...
    Or No Doubt "you and me used to be together"...

    Why actually "you and me" and not "you and I"???

    thanks...

  2. #2
    Barb_D's Avatar
    Barb_D is offline Moderator
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    Default Re: "You and me" with "you and I"

    Songs should not be used as examples of excellent grammar.
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    I'm not a teacher, but I write for a living. Please don't ask me about 2nd conditionals, but I'm a safe bet for what reads well in (American) English.

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    freezeframe is offline Key Member
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    Default Re: "You and me" with "you and I"

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicky_K View Post
    Lady Gaga sings "you and me could write a bad romance"...
    Or No Doubt "you and me used to be together"...

    Why actually "you and me" and not "you and I"???

    thanks...
    The two -- "you and me" and "you and I" -- are often used incorrectly by native speakers.
    Nicky_K likes this.

  4. #4
    Bide is offline Newbie
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    Default Re: "You and me" with "you and I"

    I think many speakers expand 'we' to 'you and me' (= us) instead of the more correct 'you and I'. It is normally not acceptable to have 'me' as a subject pronoun.
    According to some grammars, 'It's me' is ungrammatical, but how many English speakers say 'It is I'??
    Combinations of personal pronouns with 'you' can confuse, because 'you' can be both nominative (subjective) and accusative (objective).
    There are of course situations where 'you and me' is correct, 'He teaches you and me'. 'me' is also used as a subject in constructions with verbal nouns like: 'Me going to Irak was a surprise', where the nominative pronoun (I) would sound wrong.

    I wonder what drove people to give themselves two pronouns? 'I' and 'me' are one and the same person. The roots of the distinction are very old. Chinese makes no such distinction, with no loss of clarity. A dative form of 'me' is found in 'Mir ist kalt' (= Ich bin kalt.), and is, at least syntactically, the subject.
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    TheParser is offline Key Member
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    Default Re: "You and me" with "you and I"

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicky_K View Post
    Lady Gaga sings "you and me could write a bad romance"...
    Or No Doubt "you and me used to be together"...

    Why actually "you and me" and not "you and I"???

    thanks...
    ***** NOT A TEACHER *****


    (1) Many younger Americans (and those who are not so young)

    regularly say things such as:

    Me and my friend went to Disneyland yesterday.

    When you hear such things, you will probably think:

    Shouldn't it be "My friend and I ..."? And you will be correct --

    not those native speakers.
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  6. #6
    freezeframe is offline Key Member
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    Default Re: "You and me" with "you and I"

    Quote Originally Posted by Bide View Post

    I wonder what drove people to give themselves two pronouns? 'I' and 'me' are one and the same person. The roots of the distinction are very old. Chinese makes no such distinction, with no loss of clarity. A dative form of 'me' is found in 'Mir ist kalt' (= Ich bin kalt.), and is, at least syntactically, the subject.
    I'm confused by what you're saying here. Me is an inflected form of I: it's an objective pronoun that is a remnant of the English declension system. Of course it's the same person.

    Mir is not a dative form of me but the equivalent of me (when it's used in a dative sense); mir is the dative form of ich (I).
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  7. #7
    Bide is offline Newbie
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    Default Re: "You and me" with "you and I"

    In the depths of time, there may have been a chicken and egg situation. Either there was a word 'I' which then became inflected to 'me', or vice versa. Which came first, and what drove people to find another pronoun for exactly the same referent? As I said, Chinese happily uses 'wo' for both,
    I'll stick with 'mir' is the dative form of 'me', (or Bavarian for 'we' haha!).
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  8. #8
    freezeframe is offline Key Member
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    Default Re: "You and me" with "you and I"

    Quote Originally Posted by Bide View Post
    In the depths of time, there may have been a chicken and egg situation. Either there was a word 'I' which then became inflected to 'me', or vice versa. Which came first, and what drove people to find another pronoun for exactly the same referent? As I said, Chinese happily uses 'wo' for both,

    It's in a different case (it shows how elements of the sentence are related to each other) so it's not the exact same thing.

    I'll stick with 'mir' is the dative form of 'me', (or Bavarian for 'we' haha!).

    Whatever floats your boat.
    .
    Nicky_K likes this.

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