Re: OT: Latin subject-verb agreement

In a message dated 12/12/2007 8:32:08 PM Central Standard Time,
conlang@CASSOWARY.ORG writes:


> They're special. I don't know all the details, but in English you say
> things like "It's me", whereas decent languages with proper nominative
> first person singular pronouns say "It's I", or "Me and John went for a
> run" or "Jack beat John and I". Similar bugs can be found in all the
> English pronouns ("Us English speakers don't use pronouns properly all
> the time", "Latin speakers did case better than we English speakers").
>
Okay, now I understand.
I get annoyed at all the wrong case usage I hear around me, also in popular
songs.
But I suspect that the cause of all the confusion is that English is becoming
more position (word order) than case oriented.
Some of it sounds normal to me, like "Me and my friend had fun", but others,
like "between you and I", "They gave it to him and I", such sound wrong.  I
haven't noticed nearly as much wrong usage of "he", "she", "they" instead of
"him", "her", "them".
I once recently had a short discussion about using "they" as a singular
pronoun with an English (ESL) teacher, not his usual profession.  He was teaching
Chinese students to use "they" as a singular pronoun.

Despite all this confusion, "I" and "am" are still the base forms you
mentioned at the outside.  All 'nonstandard' usage and forms refers back to these.

stevo

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