I wrote an elaborate post about what JD Vance said (on Joe Rogan) about "the normal gay guy," and the subject, in the comments immediately turned to pronouns. No, not the innovative pronoun usage that has come into vogue in recent years but old-time grammar. Vance used the objective pronoun as a subject: "I wouldn't be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote."
The first commenter, Ralph L, calls attention to it, and I, the second commenter, point out that Vance used "me" as the subject more than that one time." 53 minutes into the podcast: "So one of the big things that me and President Trump confront all the time is the accusation that we're somehow like in bed with Russia, which is like the, the dumbest thing in the world to me."
Naturally, I thought about the "Me and" playlist I put together on Spotify a while ago. I'll embed it at the bottom of this post, but the point I want to make is that the "Me and" form — used as a subject — works very nicely in the colloquial speech that is reflected in many excellent song lyrics. Not all of the "Me and" songs on my playlist use "me" ungrammatically. But the ones that do are:
• Me and my uncle went riding down/South Colorado, West Texas bound...
• Me and the Devil/Was walkin' side by side/And I'm going to beat my woman/Until I get satisfied...
• It's me and my Arrow...
• It's me and Mr. Jones...
You might think some of the others are ungrammatical — for example "Me and Mrs. Jones/We got a thing going on" — but I take the position that it's preferable to use the objective pronoun when it's set off like that and followed by the correct subjective pronoun. In that example, the "We" makes it right. Another example: "Me and Magdalena/We're driving south through Monterey." You know it's right to say "Me, I'm leaving" and not "I, I'm leaving."
I'm glad the opportunity to talk about grammar arose organically this morning. It's a refreshing topic, amidst all this angst about the election. Me, I hope you enjoyed it. And do, please listen to the playlist:
Posts
62 comments:
Don't you be hatin' on how people talk, yo. If Ebonics is a valid form of communication, then "Hilbonics" is too.
Peggy Lee, Judy Garland and so many others did Me and My Shadow…
In various forms of Gaelic, the first person singular ("I" in English) is mi or me.
And in Scots Gaelic, they do not make the strong distinction between the nominative and accusative pronouns ("I/me") that standard English does.
"don't forget Me and Bobby McGee..." - the ghost of Kris Kristofferson
The Ebonics conjugation of "be" - which comes from West African languages - mirrors similar constructions in Gaelic. Constructions that English has to express differently.
The objective case is the "unmarked" case in English, meaning that it's used when there's no special reason for marking it as subjective case. Think of it as a modest down-toner of self if another word is there to take the subject position.
The actual (no justification except imitating higher class language) errors are "Smith and I" where the objective case is called for. He talked to Smith and I.
"Peggy Lee, Judy Garland and so many others did Me and My Shadow"
I know and I considered them before selecting the one I wanted to end my playlist. I like Frank and Sammy horsing around. It's racially transgressive, you know.
Peggy and Judy are sad about loneliness. Frank is happy to have a black friend.
""don't forget Me and Bobby McGee..." - the ghost of Kris Kristofferson"
The playlist must be scrolled through. That song is on my playlist... twice!
"Me and You and a Dog Named Boo"
Things left off the playlist.
I wanted a playlist I'd listen to, which this is.
I also left off "Me and My Robot Wife."
Making musical perfection even better, as if that's possible.
I hadn't realized I'd been tagged so often, and for such trivialities.
I've never heard Vance say "All y'all." This leads me to think he's gone all Yalie, and abandoned his roots.
Your taste is impeccable.
You were too old for Boo in 1971. The Lobo youtube version has 13 million views--thirteen people, a millions times each.
On Language by William Safire. According to Archives.org " this tome enlightens readers concerning proper usage, correct pronunciation, the roots of daily discourse, and the vacuous lingo in which "subsume" is co-opting "co-opt", word-burning stoves become "energy systems", and stores that sell eyeglasses squint out at the public as "vision centers." I wish Safire were still around to chart the changes. In his day you could apply a general rule which distinguished between spoken language and written language. You weren't supposed to write "me and X" but you could say it; you could avoid being pompous in speaking in the way you used who/whom but not in writing. And there were other rules but they all aimed at the overarching goal of being simple, direct and clear in speech and writing.
But these days "vacuous lingo" is has morphed to vicious as wrongspeak leads to cancelled lives.
And other new uncharted abuses are creeping in. There is a subtle misuse of language which comes from using a word which a thesaurus might say is a synonym but which is actually inappropriate. (Now that I've brought this up I can't recall an example off-hand; I'll have to start memorizing examples of this presently nameless abuse.) Anyhow. I believe this abuse comes from AI generated content. The wrongness isn't the wrongness of a translation; it isn't a malapropism (a "grotesque misuse", says Wikipedia). It's an inability to feel the difference between one word and another similar word. AI can't "just feel" how wrong a word is in a particular context. The word it uses isn't exactly wrong but exactly wrong is exactly what it is.
Excellent playlist!
Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun,
Dust on my face and my cape.
Me and Magdalena on the run-
I think this time we shall escape.
Ralph L said...
You were too old for Boo in 1971. The Lobo youtube version has 13 million views--thirteen people, a millions times each.
Lol.
Some people prefer the Stonewall Jackson version.
lol!
Only on the Althouse blog. Great stuff!
I have reluctantly come to accept this usage, but it still sounds awful, like someone waving a sharp object near my eye.
“Me and Mrs. Jones”… we got a thing goin’ on…
“Me and Julio” down by the schoolyard…
The one that always gets me is “Touch Me” by the Doors. The lyrics go, “ Now I'm gonna love you, Till the heavens stop the rain, I'm gonna love you, Till the stars fall from the sky, For you and I.”
Yeah it rhymes, but “you and I” is 100% incorrect and it grates!
When I heard Vance say "me and Trump" the first time, it stopped me. Most people would say, "Trump and I..." I think it is his real speech pattern, rather than a Yale man trying to talk hillbilly.
It’s the “him and I” that I can’t abide.
Okay… I looked at the playlist
Grok says here are some songs that start with "Me and You":
1. **"Me and You"** by Kenny Chesney
- This is a country song from his album *When the Sun Goes Down*.
2. **"Me and You"** by Tokimonsta feat. Estelle
- An electronic/R&B track from the album *Lune Rouge*.
3. **"Me and You"** by Brent Faiyaz
- Known for his R&B style, this track features his smooth vocals.
4. **"Me and You"** by Miss A
- A K-pop song known for its catchy melody and dance.
5. **"Me and You"** by Alexia
- An Italian Eurodance song.
6. **"Me and You"** by Sabrina Claudio
- An R&B song with her characteristic mellow vibe.
7. **"Me and You"** by Two Door Cinema Club
- From their album *Beacon*, this is more of an indie rock tune.
8. **"Me and You"** by Eggshells
- An indie/alternative song with a focus on acoustic elements.
9. **"Me and You"** by Honne
- British electronic duo known for their soulful pop tunes.
10. **"Me and You"** by L.A.B.
- A reggae/rock band from New Zealand with this song in their discography.
I never know what the name of songs that I hear are anyways.
"Most call it a bad habit
Your z mama told you, could end up dead
With Me and Your Cigarettes"
Miranda Lambert
JD's use of the me as subject is grating to my ears.
Approximately 4% as grating as when John Kerry asked, "Can I get me a huntin' license here?"
But this misuse of ‘me’ sounds better than the equivalent misuse of the nominative— as in, say, ‘Anne and I’ after a preposition. And when ‘me’ is used in a song title or to begin a sentence, it sometimes is just shorthand for the phrase ‘as for …’. The phrase ‘As for Anne and me, we prefer …’ is correct and works just as well if you leave out the ‘as for.’ Same in French, where (with apologies to Piaf) the construction ‘Moi, je ne regrette rein’ conveys the same idea. Using the objective case to begin the sentence in that way adds emphasis to the subject.
Your list clanged a memory bell in my mind and sent me to the internet to find the album that Me and My Arrow came from. I recalled that song from when my dad introduced me to the album when I was a child. I just spent an interesting half hour listening to The Point for the first time in 40 years. It’s interesting the way you perceive things as a child. Back then it seemed a little nonsensical to me; I understand The Point better now.
I saw a sign in a barber shop reading “It pays to look well.” Talk about trying too hard.
Let me repeat and agree with your comment on the original thread where you said "this is the inverse of the 'between you and I' people." I delight in a tasty language nugget and a perfect inversion is rare. Well done!
There's a pizza chain in central California called Me and Ed's. Yes with the possessive in the name.
if ONLY we could have had the Archies doing Boo
I'm glad you're glad.
Anyway...........
I've given up thinking that elite universities will teach people correct pronouns. Other politicians (Obama and multiple others) also get it wrong, but they tend to over-correct and use "I" or "myself" when they should be using "me". They're trying to avoid the mistake that Vance is making, so they try to avoid "me" altogether.
"Me and Trump" is a compound subject in Appalachian English and other dialects. It used to bother me, but now I know some of the logic/linguistic history behind it, it doesn't as much. Over-correction still bothers me. Probably because it is done by people who were obviously taught correct usage but failed to learn.
I think how you use pronouns is probably a good way of determining your grandparents' social status.
The answer to almost all English grammar and spelling weirdness is either the French (Normans), monks working as scribes, or 18th century grammar scholars who wanted English to behave like Latin. I blame the French for the "Me and Trump" (Trump et moi) usage of "me" instead of "I". The word order is a different matter.
Poor grammar annoys me. It seems to be increasingly common among the younger generations.
I suspect that JD Vance deliberately used poor grammar to show that he is just one of the guys, thus downplaying his elite level of intelligence and education.
The Grateful Dead did “Me and My Uncle” more often than any other song in their repertoire, often played in tandem with the other so-called cowboy songs; Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried”, “Mexicali Blues” and Johnny Cash’s “Big River”,
“Me and My Uncle “was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Me like the song…
That is Vance's Kentucky hillbilly background shining through- as a fellow Kentucky hillbilly, it was refreshing to see and hear.
Very interesting. Gaelic expressions still are quite common in English (Da for Dad) and this might well explain the persistence of “me” as the subject of a phrase. Well, that and the fact that even English teachers don’t understand the object case anymore.
Ungrammatical song lyrics have been annoying me since I was a kid in the 1960s. Double negatives were a particular ear thorn.
A well-heeled, highly educated politician eschewing grammatical speech for a more colloquial, understandable "common man" word choice does grate a bit, but it isn't as bad as faking an accent one never, ever had before speaking in front of a select audience. That is just pandering.
Which is more irritating--using the first person singular subjective case incorrectly (She came with my brother and I) or the objective case (My brother and me went to the movies)?
It is a tie!
Jim Morrison had a voice!
I've not listened to podcasts before. I did dip into Joe Rogan and J.D. Vance. I might start listening to Rogan--just two people sitting down and shooting the bull. Kinda nice. As for the language question? English is a remarkably flexible means of communication--"incorrect" usage is readily understood.
I sense it is not pretension or artifice with Vance, but rather a natural carry-over from his childhood. I grew up with kids that had the same habit.
Me don't care.
How does MEad feel about all of this?
It is very well documented that Frank Sinatra did more for the black entertainers of his time than any other big-name performer. He may have had many other character defects but racism wasn’t one of them. You could kid around about race, religion, and ethnicity back then without audience members of both sexes clutching pearls and calling for cancellation of an entertainer. Davis, Rickles, and Martin immediately come to mind.
John McWhorter has expounded on this, er, subject several times over the years, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/opinion/pronouns-english-grammar.html: "The reality of English is this: There’s nothing erroneous about saying 'You and me know,' quite in spite of the fact that you indeed would not say 'Me know.' "
My parents corrected it completely out of my young vocabulary very early to the point I always stop and think through even using it in an adverbial phrase ("given to me and my sister").
Vance demonstrated how his memaw "enriched" his vocabulary a lot in this discussion. Even quoting his seven- year-old saying "Fuck!" on a crowded airplane. I recommend the Trump one too if you didn't listen/watch that one. Very illuminating.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" starts with a mixup of objective and subjective pronouns. "Let us go, then, you and I..."
Out: "Me and a friend of mine...."
In": "I and a friend of me...."
It's the royal we, us, and our singular identity.
I'm listening to the JRE episode with Vance now. While they were talking about the 1st Amendment, Rogan said "to who". Anyone jumping on him for not saying "to whom"?
You can jump on Rogan all you like. He's not my type.
There was a great song called "Me and Elvis" that was covered by Human Radio in 1990. I remember it from an album I heard in high school circa 1980, but can't remember the name of the artist. Any musical super trivia buffs who wish to chime in on this urgent question may be aided by two other song titles from the album: "Einstein's Brain" and "Plastic Money." Jimmy Webb also wrote a song called "Elvis and Me."
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