My girlfriend and me

als kurze Unterschrift geht das. Bei einem ganzen, längeren Satz würde ich "and I" empfehlen.

My girlfriend and me ist eine Umgangssprache, aber keine Grammatik. Sag my girlfriend and I, wenn du klug sein willst:D
In dem anderen Beitrag erklärt es jemand klug, du musst es lesen.

But "my friend and I" (or, less formally, "me and my friend") is also possible. In contrast to German, you don't have to specify the sex of your friend if you don't want to.

Wenn Du korrektes Englisch gebrauchen willst, dann richte Dich nach der Stellung im Satz - genau wie im Deutschen.

Also Subjekt, oder auch bei einer kurzen Foto-Unterschrift: "Meine Freundin und ich (gingen in den Park)" - "My (girl)friend and I".

Objekt, wie z.B. in: "Meine Eltern besuchten meine Freundin und mich" - "... my girlfriend and me".


Die Konstruktion "My (girl)friend and me" als Subjekt wird im AE umgangssprachlich zwar viel gebraucht; das macht es aber nicht richtiger.

Als deutsche(r) Muttersprachler(in) hast Du es da viel einfacher als alle Amerikaner, die mühsam erst Regeln dafür lernen müssen, weil sie es von klein auf dauernd falsch hören. Du übersetzt einfach nur wörtlich: ich = I, mich/mir = me.

Nochmal zum Foto:

My friend and I are shown. - wer wird gezeigt?
This photo shows my friend and me. - wen zeigt das Foto?

Bei Bildunterschriften denkt sich der Anglophone das "This shows" meist bloß.
Es gehen also beide, aber jeweils nur abhängig vom Kontext.

@Anna C., who says "Wenn Du korrektes Englisch gebrauchen willst, dann richte Dich nach der Stellung im Satz - genau wie im Deutschen". But English grammar is not exactly like German. If it were, why would there be so much discussion here?

And one of the places where it differs from German is precisely in the treatment of these conjoined noun phrases.

As everyone recognizes, English speakers very often say things like "Me and my friend are going out now". We also often say "She spoke to my friend and I." This may sound wrong to German speakers (and I can see why it would), but the fact is, this is the way the majority of English speakers use the language. (The first usage is informal, the second is more formal.) Calling it "wrong" or "ungrammatical" doesn't help learners of the language. (Where do the rules of grammar come from, after all?)

It is much better to explain the circumstances in which native speakers use the different turns of phrase. That should be the goal of any decent grammar.

@ Martin: I am aware that English speakers use these forms a lot (as I said in #5), and in colloquial use, that's perfectly fine with me. I do it too in colloquial English.

But it was at an AMERICAN high school and in AMERICAN grammar classes that I was taught that this is considered wrong English. It's not like I am the one setting up these rules.

Obviously English grammar is not exactly like German grammar.
I never said that.
But in this case, my American friends always had a lot more trouble than I had following the rules our teachers told us were right - simply because coming from the German language, I would never think of saying "Meine Freundin und mich gehen in den Park".

This is a problem American native speakers have with their own language.
It's one of the few problems native German speakers do NOT have with the English language (no reason to get jealous - there are enough problems left for us ;-) ).
And this is the reason why I said: In this case, just translate literally what you would use in German.

There is a nice explanation on the topic of reflexive pronouns right here:
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/myself-g...
Of course in this thread we are not talking about reflexive pronouns, but the problem is basically the same, like in the sentence "Please contact Squiggly, Aardvark, or myself with questions."
Aside from dry grammatical rules, they give some advice in this text that I find really helpful in case of doubt:
"The quick and dirty tip is to think about how you would write the sentence if you were the only one in it, and then use that pronoun. For example, “Please contact me.”"

So, applying this tip to your sentences, this is what you get:
"Me and my friend are going out now". "Me am going out now" - ??
"She spoke to my friend and I." "She spoke to I." - ??
Would you seriously consider this correct English?

"As everyone recognizes, English speakers very often say things like "Me and my friend are going out now". We also often say "She spoke to my friend and I." ... way the majority of English speakers use the language. (The first usage is informal, the second is more formal.)"

Hi Martin--cal, I beg to differ :)
I fully agree that SOME or maybe even a LOT of English speakers use the language this way, but not the majority. If usage = correct, then yes, it is, or is on it's way to becoming correct.
However, grammar still dictates that it is wrong at this time.
Drop the compound: Me is going out now - would you say that? or She spoke to I? - I don't think so. The compound throws most people out of wack.
In the first case, My friend and I would be correct, as the subject of the verb. (subjective case)
In the second case, the "I" is a hypercorrection. "me" is the direct object of the preposition "to" (accusative case). She spoke to my friend and me.

@N3KO - genau wie auf Deutsch - "I" wenn es Nominativ ist, "me" wenn es Akkusativ ist. Wenn es Dir aber um Umgangssprache geht, ist es natuerlich was ganz anderes.

sorry - me am going out, not me is.... so as not to confuse the issues even more :)

@martin--cal

"English speakers very often say things like "Me and my friend are going out now". We also often say "She spoke to my friend and I." This may sound wrong to German speakers (and I can see why it would), but the fact is, this is the way the majority of English speakers use the language. (The first usage is informal, the second is more formal.)"

The fact that English speakers often say particular things does not make them correct. English speakers also frequently use apostrophes incorrectly, confuse there/their/they're etc. etc. ad nauseam. This does not mean that anyone learning the language should learn, much less imitate, these mistakes.

"Me and my friend ..." is not only stylistically poor (it should be "My friend and I..."), it is also grammatically incorrect. One would not say "Me is going out" and similarly one should not say "My friend and me" either.

As far as "She spoke to my friend and I" is concerned, this is not 'more formal', it is every bit as incorrect. It shows a misguided attempt at trying to use 'correct' English, in the mistaken belief that 'I' is always more formal than 'me'. It isn't.

I disagree that "...Calling it "wrong" or "ungrammatical" doesn't help learners of the language."
- teaching learners of the language grammatical errors does not help them. Let them get the rules right first. Once they have learned the language, they can decide for themselves whether to adhere to the rules or not; with increasing experience they will be able to recognise whether strictly correct language might appear too stilted for a given situation.

@N3KO

If you want to know whether to use 'I' or 'me', try the sentence without the other party in it. "... going shopping" = "I am going shopping --> My friend and I are going shopping". "She spoke to..." = "She spoke to me --> She spoke to my friend and me".


As far as the picture is concerned, the grammatically correct version would be "My (girl)friend and I". However, this is probably the construction where 'me' is most commonly used. Personally I would use "I", although some may feel that this is slightly stilted.

Martin, I see that you lean toward permissiveness in language, and many linguists do that, including--alas--dictionaries.

However, it is important for anyone trying to master English to know which forms are correct and should be used in most writing and public speaking, and these have been adequately explained in the above.

As also already said, we should be careful about saying the majority of English speakers use the incorrect forms. That may be true in the U.S., but it would be interesting to know whether this is true throughout the rest of the English-speaking world.

@RES, OK, let's continue the discussion a bit. (But please excuse me if I drop out after a while - we've already argued this very point often before here in Leo.)

a) You say "SOME or maybe even a LOT of English speakers use the language this way, but not the majority." Just going from personal observation, I'll grant that on the "me and my friend are going out" construction, but I'm persuaded (from personal observation) that, in fact, the majority of people do indeed say "I gave it to my friend and I".

Not that Google is definitive proof of anything, but a quick search shows the following statistics:
"to me and my friend" 36,600 hits
"to my friend and me" 445 hits
"to my friend and I" 84,700 hits.

I'm sure that the ratio is even more skewed to the third option in informal spoken English. (No statistics to back up that impression, though.)

2) You claim, "grammar still dictates that it is wrong at this time." That depends, of course, on whose grammar book you're reading. If your grammar book says "to my friend and I" is ungrammatical, then I think you're reading a poor grammar. (Or, more likely, a prescriptive grammar -- useful, if your interest is in getting a good grade in school; not so useful, if your interest is in explaining how native speakers use the language.) Other grammar books though (e.g. A Student's Introduction to English Grammar; Huddleston & Pullum) give a more nuanced view.

3) You suggest, "drop the compound". No, of course I don't say "me is going out now" or "me am going out now." No one does. But people do say "Me and my friend are going out now." The point is that you can't determine how to say something by "dropping the compound" because (in English, if not in German) different rules apply to pronouns in compounds than to isolated pronouns. 

4) In summary, nicht genau wie auf Deutsch.

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionari...

Between you and me is acceptable in standard English; between you and I isn't. This is because between is a preposition, and pronouns that come after prepositions are in the accusative case (here, me), not the nominative case (not I).

The same applies to a pair of pronouns that is the object of a verb: They've invited you and me to dinner is acceptable, They've invited you and I to dinner isn't.

The reason why expressions like between you and I have become so common is that people are aware that the accustive case is not correct for the subject of a verb ( You and I have been invited is acceptable; You and me have been invited is not), so they make the mistake of thinking it is not correct anywhere, and always use the nominative case.

If you are in any doubt, try leaving out the first pronoun of the pair. That will show you what case the second one should be: between I and they've invited I are clearly ungrammatical.


http://www.iconbooks.co.uk/book.cfm?isbn=1-84...

Standards of spoken and written English are deteriorating throughout the land. Broadsheet journalists, serious broadcasters, novelists, politicians and, most culpably of all, the educators themselves are all too frequently guilty of misuse of words and phrases under the misapprehension that they are speaking or writing 'proper English'.

This handy guide is an heroic attempt to salvage some pearls of good usage from the linguistic dystopia of modern Britain.

Between You and I should be the constant bedside companion of any person of sensibility who, against all odds, wants to save our language.


http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/myself.html

Educated people know that “Jim and me are goin’ down to slop the hogs,” is not elegant speech, not “correct.” It should be “Jim and I” because if I were slopping the hogs alone I would never say “Me is going. . . .” If you refer to yourself first, the same rule applies: It’s not “Me and Jim are going” but “I and Jim are going.”


http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/between-...

The proper sentence is I love you, not Me love you. You use I because the pronoun is the subject of the sentence, and I is the subjective pronoun. And if you've been speaking English your whole life, your ear quickly picks up the difference between right and wrong. I play the marimbas versus Me play the marimbas.

Squiggly loves me is the proper sentence, not Squiggly loves I. I'm the target of Squiggly's love, so I'm in the object position in that sentence, and the objective pronoun is me. Again, in most cases your ear should pick up the difference. He gave the marimbas to me versus He gave the marimbas to I.

Above there is a quick selection of websites & extracts from them on the topic of 'me' or 'I'.

I must say, though, I am very surprised indeed to hear that martin feels that the majority of people do say "I gave it to my friend and I". While I am quite familiar with 'me' being frequently used incorrectly, the construction with the over-used 'I' is, thankfully, relatively rare (at least here in England). Yes, there are people who use it, but it is far less common than the use of 'me'.

Thank you, Richard. Using the object pronoun where a subject pronoun is indicated and vice versa is wrong in ANY version of the language, no matter where you come from. Such usage is a a reflection of the educational level of the speaker, NOT of his or her nationality. This America-bashing is tiresome.

@Martin #13, no rebuttal from me - it's all been very adequately expressed by a variety of the above posters. ... we may have to end up agreeing to disagree. I stand firm on my positions on "I" (subjective) and "me" (accusative/objective) :)

@Richard @14 - sadly (in my opinion anyway), "I" is being incorrectly used with an increasing frequency (hypercorrection - ugh!!) Although we do have our own Canadianisms, our language usage is of course very similar, if not almost identical to AE usage.

Richard, the overused 'I's come from teachers trying to stamp out the colloquial/dialect/"natural" use of "me" as in "Me and my friend are going...".

We are taught that a) you should not put yourself first (so start with "my friend") and b) you should say "I" and not "me". So many (half-)educated people conclude (at primary school age, so it becomes habitual) that "my friend and me" is always incorrect. 'Change "me" to "I" and make it the last element in the sentence and you can't go wrong', is what they think.

To be honest, I don't think the teachers (at my school anyway) necessarily understood the rule properly - or at least, they only half taught it. The emphasis was mainly on the moralistic aspect of not putting yourself first ("My brother and I" not "Me and my brother"!) Funnily, it wouldn't occur to anyone to say "I and my brother" (not to children, anyway) - it sounds highly stilted.

My brief conclusion here: Non-standard usage such as "between you and I" is an artificial product of misguided education attempts. But "me and my friend are going to the park" is something that is older and more ingrained in natural English (call it dialect or colloquial if you will). Trying to get rid of the latter has caused more of the artificial type of non-standard usage (avoidance of "me" with compound personal pronouns).

Martin, I disagree with you on "That depends, of course, on whose grammar book you're reading. If your grammar book says "to my friend and I" is ungrammatical, then I think you're reading a poor grammar."

I do not have access to the "grammars" you cite, so I cannot judge for myself where they come down on this issue, let alone whether they are good or poor.

However, if they tell students that it is ok to use "Me and my friends like hanging out in the mall" is ok for business correspondence, academic papers, journalism, public speaking, and so on, then they are poor ones and can be dismissed with an impatient gesture of the hand.

The most authoritative guide to writing style in the U.S. publishing world is the Chicago Manual of Style, and though I have not taken the time to check it, I'll be the farm that it will not sanction "that is ok with him and I" and other atrocities.

"My friends and I" and "and for you and for me" are grammatically correct by virtue of long historical development (and no other reason, incidentally), and remain so. The weight of recent incorrect usage has not yet changed that.

@Todd

My comment was not meant as America bashing in the slightest. I was surprised at Martin's comment in #13:
a) You say "SOME or maybe even a LOT of English speakers use the language this way, but not the majority." Just going from personal observation, I'll grant that on the "me and my friend are going out" construction, but I'm persuaded (from personal observation) that, in fact, the majority of people do indeed say "I gave it to my friend and I".

In my experience, here in England, it is the other way around- "me & my friend are going out" is fairly common, while "I gave it to my friend and I" is less so. Both are equally incorrect, so I don't quite see where you got the impression that I was America bashing.

My comment was about usage in NZ, of course. Could it be that countries that were former colonies of Britain have tried harder to eradicate all or most elements of British dialects - thus resulting in a higher level of hypercorrection mistakes as opposed to colloquial usage mistakes?

@Martin:

Aye. But where do those google hits come from?
The answer is quite simple. google's current algorithms do not take punctuation or linguistic studies into account and are not exactly pre-determined to know or to tell us whether strings are exactly one phrase or whether they are part of two or more, say, syntactical units.
So a query that reads "to my friend and I" is designed to outnumber its competing versions - for the results will contain sentences such as "I gave it to my friend and I left the house". Discussions on grammar may be google-proof and quantifiable indeed, but the methods applied here definitely lack methodology.

Besides, there would be no way of writing language schoolbooks / guides if authors had to prove(!) that expressions were in use by the majority of L1 speakers. That would mean checking the use of the English of an estimated 280,000,000 adult people. A term.

I wonder if English speakers (AE, BE and elsewhere) struggle more with "my friend and me" than German speakers do because we're simply not as used to having inflected articles/adjectives/nouns, so it comes as a bit of a shock when pronouns change their form depending on where they are in the sentence?

Richard- no problem. I actually agree wholeheartedly with your posting prior to mine and was referring to earlier posts (mostly Bob's #12)

Villager: Well, I'm sure that learning German and French at school helped me to understand English grammar better. (We only learned grammar at primary school - and only because we had nuns as teachers - at secondary school no grammar was taught, except for foreign languages. I was quite shocked that a girl in the sixth form didn't know what a noun or a verb were.)

And knowing German certainly helps me to know whether I should say "my sister and I" or "my sister and me", and I am in a position to smugly cringe when my sister gets it wrong (her "sin" is hypercorrection).

But is the acceptedly correct version natural English? Maybe it is the insistence on putting the first person second in such constructions that confuses people. If you said "Jamie's going to the park with me and my sister" no native speaker would get it wrong (by using 'I' instead of 'me'). But this (moral? religious?) "put-yourself-last"-rule seems to have ruined people's feeling for their own language.

Todd, In don't see how you could possibly get America bashing out of my #12, if in fact that is what you mean.

I have never been involved in bashing any nationality in my life. I stay strictly away from nationalism.

Martin asserted in #7 that the majority of English speakers use the incorrect forms. I point out that his perception is (as I assume) based on his experience in the U.S. I asked whether the same misusage is equally common throughout the rest of the English-speaking world. It is annoying that you would find this America bashing.

I’m gratified to have so many distinguished respondents who disagree with me.

@Richard (#14): I’m afraid you missed my point. Let me try again. No one says "Me play the marimbas". People do say "Me and my friend play in a band together." The rules that apply to pronouns standing along do not apply, in informal conversational English, to compounds of nouns and pronouns.

@Todd (#15): Saying "Using the object pronoun where a subject pronoun is indicated and vice versa is wrong" is just begging the question.

@RES (#16) and Mary (#17. #20): I don’t think that ascribing "between you and I" to hypercorrection is an adequate explanation. The usage can be cited in hundreds of years of English writing and among writers (Shakespeare, John Webster, Pepys, Congreve, etc.) who can hardly be charged with being guilty of hypercorrection.

@Bob (#18), no, they don’t say that that "ME and me friends like hanging out" is OK for business correspondence; they identify the usage as non-standard. To quote Huddleston & Pullum (pt. 107): [The] "construction is not accepted as Standard English, though it is very common in non-standard speech.") However Huddleston & Pullum do recognize "They invited Sandy and I" as a variety of Standard English.

@t0nda (#21) Very good point about the erroneous hits on "to my friend and I. So (if we want to count Google hits as a way to determine majority behavior -- a point raised by RES, not me) – let’s try some searches using prepositions that require two objects. The results should be unambiguous.
Between me and my friend: 19,700
Between my friend and me: 17,200
Between my friend and I: 58,900

(Similar results, although with smaller numbers, doing the search with "among" instead of "between.")

@Villager (#22): People don’t struggle at all; "me and my friend went out" rolls right off the lips.

@Bob (#25): I never asserted that the majority of English speakers use the incorrect forms. What I do assert is that grammar books that identify the form used by the majority of English speakers as incorrect are less than helpful.

Bob: when you write "As also already said, we should be careful about saying the majority of English speakers use the incorrect forms. That may be true in the U.S., but it would be interesting to know whether this is true throughout the rest of the English-speaking world", I think it is not an unreasonable conclusion to read into it that you think the majority of US speakers DO use the incorrect forms.

@Martin

The rules that apply to pronouns standing along do not apply, in informal conversational English, to compounds of nouns and pronouns.

Yes they do. As I have pointed out before, I appreciate that the constructions are used in conversational English, and also that most native speakers would not pick that up as a glaring error. So yes, it is common, yes it is used, yes, it would not make you a laughing stock and/or identify you as a foreigner who can't speak the language properly, but no, it is not correct.

Martin, in #26 you wrote: "I never asserted that the majority of English speakers use the incorrect forms."

But in #7 you wrote: "but the fact is, this is the way the majority of English speakers use the language"

Todd, first of all, it was Martin who asserted that the majority of English speakers use the incorrect forms (#7), not I.

Since he seems to be American, it is reasonable to assume that he bases this assertion on his own experience in the U.S. Thus, it is entirely legitimate and in order to ask whether this pattern of speech is peculiarly American or whether it pervades all English-speaking regions.

There is no way you can read anti-Americanism into that. In fact there is none.

One more note: dictionaries and reputable grammar reference sources do not determine what is correct or standard language by googling (I'm sure everyone understands this). They generally do not much survey Internet or even spoken usage. Rather, as I understand it, they survey what appears in printed, edited texts of major publications (newspapers, academic journals, major authors, etc.)

Thus, until "Me and my friends love Seinfeld" creeps into a sufficient number of professionally edited writings, it will be regarded as nonstandard and colloquial and not suited to formal or careful writing.

It is necessary to know grammar, and it is better to write grammatically than not, but it is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated. Usage is the only test.
(William Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, (1938)

Proponents of prescriptive and descriptive grammar will never meet. Just pick your side and be ready for never ending debates.

I have the impression that there are not many prescriptive grammarians around these days. They had their heyday in the 19th century, did they not?

Modern dictionaries and grammars are scientifically researched and prepared and derive grammar from the printed record of professional writers and editors--and take account of change and development in language.

As individual translators and amateurs we may debate our preferences and may lean toward tradition or toward innovation; however, careful and correct writers will learn to take the standard reference works as their starting points.