Comments on: All Pronoun Cases Are Created Equal

By: Maeve

Maeve — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:08:46 +0000

Your child’s usage, “smarter than me,” is colloquial English. In this construction “than” is being used as a preposition.

Your preference (and mine) recognizes “than” as a conjunction introducing a clause that is understood but not expressed: “You are smarter than I (am).”

English has many such elliptical (something missing) idioms.

By: Zhou

Zhou — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:25:00 +0000

Maybe this is only an as-second-language thing, but I think a trickier case is this:

“You’re smarter than me”, “You’re smarter than I am” or “You’re smarter than I”. I always thought “You’re smarter than me” is wrong, so I said “You’re smarter than I”. My kid, who grew up in this country, immediately corrected “You’re smarter than me”. Is she right?

By: 60 in 3

60 in 3 — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:18:38 +0000

@Stacy

“The way he taught us in the first place is to pretend the second person isn’t in the sentence, how does it sound with the me or I?”

Thank you, that’s a great tip. Will use it from now on when I’m not sure which version to use.

Gal

By: Maeve

Maeve — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:58:47 +0000

Those were the good old days, Stacy.

Towards the end of my high school teaching career in the 1990’s, I corrected a student on just such a matter. She whirled on me and said “I don’t talk that way!:

By: Stacy

Stacy — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:39:49 +0000

I had this drilled into me in fourth grade. My teacher would not acknowledge our question until we phrased it correctly. He also did this with “can” and “may”. For instance, if I asked him,
“Can me and Suzie go to the library?” He would just raise his eyebrow until we tried again, “May Suzie and I go to the library?”

The way he taught us in the first place is to pretend the second person isn’t in the sentence, how does it sound with the me or I?

You wouldn’t say, “Me gave a benefit” or “They invited I”, so you shouldn’t say “Me and my friends gave a benefit” or “They invited Sally and I.”