Saturday, July 10, 2010

Between you and ...

Quick. How did you finish the phrase? Did you say "between you and me" or "between you and I"?

What's the problem? The English language, unlike, say, Latin, is not concerned with case (giving a noun a different ending depending on how it is used in a sentence). However, pronouns DO change depending on how they are used. For example, we say, "I have the ball," but "Give the ball to me." Only little children might say "Me have the ball."

When we get to today's pet peeve, people get nervous and use a hyper-correct form ("I" sounds more formal, doesn't it?)

The word "between" is a preposition. In languages that rely on endings to convey the relationship between words, nouns connected to a preposition take the objective form. Nouns in English don't change because English is a word-order language. However, pronouns break that rule. Any time a pronoun is part of a prepositional phrase, it needs to take the objective case. (Subject forms: I, you, he, she, it, we, they. Objective forms: we, you, him, her, it, us, them.)

Examples of pronouns following a preposition: Repeat after me. Charlie ate lunch with Josh and him. The ball flew over them.

If you said "between you and me," you were correct. That's music to my ears!

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