How do you say it in English when you want to break up gently with your lover?
Do you say “It’s not you, it’s me,” which sounds right but is grammatically suspect, or do you say “It’s not you—it’s I,” which sounds bizarre but is grammatically prim and proper?
In “It’s not you,” the regular Johnson language column in the November 6, 2014 issue of
The Economist defends the former usage spiritedly against the “consistent and logical” usage favored by
The New Yorker staff writer Nathan Heller
in his recent review of Steven Pinker’s
The Sense of Style.
Harrumphs the Johnson columnist R.L.G. from Berlin, Germany: “If you say ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ you are probably a native speaker of English or someone with a good command of how native speakers actually speak. If you say ‘It’s not you—it’s I,’ you will quickly achieve the goal of making the other person not want to spend any more time with you.”
The Johnson columnist fully subscribes to Pinker’s argument that the accusative pronoun “me” in “it’s me” is in fact the default case in English, and as such can be used anywhere except as the subject of a tensed verb: “In other words, in the absence of any reason to use the nominative, the accusative is natural: ‘Who ate the last piece of cake?
Him.’ ‘What,
me worry?’ ‘
Me, I prefer skiing to surfing.’”
He concludes his critique of Heller’s position: “We can be both logical and consistent without straitjacketing the language so tightly as to make its native speakers writhe in discomfort. If you think yourself articulate and care about English, yet can’t force yourself to speak as Mr Heller of the prestigious
New Yorker would have you do, don’t worry. It’s not you. It’s him.”
Read the Johnson columnist’s “It’s not you” in The Economist now!ANOTHER INTERESTING READING:In “Where Did Soul-Sucking Office-Speak Come From?”, an article that came out in the November 6, 2014 issue of
Vice.com UK, James Gingell vents his spleen against bizarre office gibberish like “deliverables,” “upskill,” “learnings,” “boil the ocean,” and “open the kimono.” Gingell asks: “And why is every office in the Western world now infested with people who use them? These are people who mostly seem all right…but insist on talking like lobotomized middle managers.”
Read James Gingell’s “Where Did Soul-Sucking Office-Speak Come From?” in Vice.com UK now!
