To get our English usage lessons off to a lively start this year, let’s dissect some of the most jaw-dropping grammar gaffes I had come across during the year that just ended [2006]. I say jaw-dropping because the mistakes were made by people you’d least expect to commit them by virtue of their profession, education, or social standing.
Let’s begin with this comment by a senator on whether the movie version of Dan Brown’s
The Da Vinci Code should be banned from Philippine cinema: “
Me and a lot of Filipinos don’t think it will influence our faith.” (The underscoring here and in the other specimen sentences that follow is mine.)
Everybody is entitled to his opinion, of course, but the senator made a grievous mistake in using the objective pronoun “me” instead of the nominative “I” to form part of his compound subject. The correct way is, of course, this: “
I and a lot of Filipinos don’t think it will influence our faith.” Or, better still, “
A lot of Filipinos including me don’t think it will influence our faith.”
Remember now the basic pronoun usage rule: The nominative or subjective pronouns “I,” “you,” “he,” “she,” “it,” “we,” and “they” do the action of the verb or act as the subject of a sentence, while the objective pronouns “me,” “you,” “him,” “her,” “it,” “us,” and “them” receive the action of the verb or act as the object of a sentence.
A corollary rule is that a nominative pronoun can be freely combined with a noun or another nominative pronoun to do either of two things: (1) jointly perform the action of the verb, or (2) form part of a compound subject. Here’s a sentence that makes a noun (“friends”) and a nominative pronoun (“I”) jointly perform the verb’s action: “
My friends and I enjoyed the Christmas holidays.” And here’s one that makes a noun (“Eleanor”) and a nominative pronoun (“you”) serve together as a compound subject: “
Eleanor and you are die-hard movie addicts.”
In contrast, an objective pronoun, say “me,” cannot be combined with a noun or a nominative pronoun, say “Julia,” to form a compound subject. Thus, the compound subject in the following sentence is improper: “
Julia and me are very close friends.” (The proper way: “
Julia and I are very close friends.”) That senator’s sentence, of course, breaches the grammar rule in precisely the same way.
It’s actually very simple to avoid making such improper combinations of nouns and personal pronouns. The trick is to isolate the doubtful personal pronoun and let it work alone in the sentence. In particular, from the senator’s original sentence—“
Me and a lot of Filipinos don’t think it will influence our faith”—drop “and a lot of Filipinos” and what do we get? “
Me don’t think it will influence our faith.” This is terribly bad English, so it’s obvious that “I” should be used instead of “me”: “
I and lot of Filipinos don’t think it will influence our faith.”
Earlier, however, I said it would be better to construct that sentence as follows: “
A lot of Filipinos including me don’t think it will influence our faith.” Let me now explain why.
There’s also a usage rule that for modesty’s sake, the first-person “I” in such compound subject constructions should take a backseat in relation to its partner noun or pronoun. The senator’s sentence is thus better said this way: “
A lot of Filipinos and I don’t think it will influence our faith.” Unfortunately, this construction is unseemly because it gives the impression that the senator is setting himself apart from his countrymen.
The more prudent construction? “
A lot of Filipinos including me don’t think it will influence our faith.” And this time, the use of the objective pronoun “me” is grammar-perfect because “me” now serves as an object instead of as a subject in the sentence.
Next:
The importance of grammar-perfect English - II (February 6, 2017)
This essay, 517th in the series, first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times
in its January 1, 2007 issue, © 2007 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.The Manila Times
ran one column in “The importance of grammar-perfect English” series each week for seven weeks in 2006, and my Facebook Gateway to the Forum is now running them every three days in succession from February 3 to 21, 2017 for the benefit of new Forum members and English learners.
