Poll: It wasn't me; I never broke it.
It wasn't me; I never broke it. |
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Votes: 358
Comments: 5
Added: December 2006
Comments:
| pat beattie - 18th December 2006 21:55 |
| The sentence is awkward, to say the least. "It wasn't me" - - why not, "It wasn't I". We would normally say, "I wasn't it", rather nan "Me wasn' it". Please excuse my punctuation. It's a reason why I need this site. |
| Dalriata - 21st April 2007 22:17 |
| Instinct tells me that a more correct form of the sentence would be, "It wasn't me; I didn't break it." I'm not sure why, from a technical standpoint though. The example just sounds wrong. |
| Not me - 6th June 2007 16:17 |
| Pat, People who say 'I never broke it' do not say 'It wasn't I'. |
| SimonTrew - 13th September 2007 15:47 |
| Dalraita-- it perhaps "just sounds wrong" because "never" implies that it may have been broken more than once. For example, "I never broke a bone" as opposed to "I didn't break a bone". It's not grammaticaly incorrect, it's just giving more force that is perhaps necessary: "I didn't break it" would do. "It wasn't me" is perfectly acceptable colloquial UK English; in fact "It wasn't I" is definitely incorrect, since the first person is the subject ("It" being the object), thus "me"-- "It" being an elision of "The person who broke the thing". |
| chris - 5th December 2011 10:43 |
| In the past, it was considered proper English to use the nominative form for predicates, e.g "it is she", or in this case "It wasn't I". In reality, this rule is used infrequently now, and I think we have a new unspoken rule: that the 'subject pronoun' is only ever used in the subject position. So, instead of "I am the man. The man is I", we say "I am the man. The man is me". I think it's time to let the old rule go. |
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