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A while ago I heard a preacher say during a speech the following personal anecdote:

When I arrived at the Atlanta airport, I saw a man with my name written on a card approach me and say 'are you reverend G…?' And I said 'He is I'…

He is I? Is that correct? I guess if we apply the rule “when the pronoun is the subject of a verb” it might be technically correct, but even Shakespeare wrote “Oh, woe is me.…” not “woe is I.”

I wonder if the preacher knocked at doors saying “it is I.”

waiwai933
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user61257
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  • related: “He is me” — is this grammatical? (He is I is actually referenced in the comments on this question also) – Flyk Jan 03 '14 at 20:49
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    Woe is me does not mean I am woe but Woe is to* me, i.e. I have been afflicted with woe*. – StoneyB on hiatus Jan 03 '14 at 20:53
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    It is not pretentious and you are confused. – Blessed Geek Jan 03 '14 at 21:26
  • How so Blessed Geek? – user61257 Jan 03 '14 at 21:33
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    It does seem an excessively pretentious response. The normal reply would be 'that's me', 'me' being the predicate of the sentence. But if you were brought up in the school of self-deprecation, like men of the cloth might be, a better reply would be a jocular 'I'm afraid so'. – WS2 Jan 03 '14 at 21:52
  • I concur WS2, but please do not get me started on the subject of "men of the cloth" – user61257 Jan 03 '14 at 21:56
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    I don't know about pretentious, but definitely awkward, or even weird. "Yes, I am" or even "I am he" sounds better to my ear – Kevin Jan 03 '14 at 22:13
  • What @Kevin said. They're a bit pretentious/affected, but "grammatically" (whatever that means) I have no problem with "I am he" or "It is I". By contrast, "He is I" sounds about as daft as "I am it". – FumbleFingers Jan 03 '14 at 22:33
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    @Susan: They're not all saying the same thing. Also they're saying them in different ways, some said more often than others 'It is I' is way more common than 'He is I'). – Mitch Jan 03 '14 at 22:46
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    I think you're reading too much into this -- weren't they just being humorous (in effect, pastiching the speech of people who say things such as "It is I")? – Neil Coffey Jan 03 '14 at 23:20
  • @Susan: Granted, there are different contexts where some of these "peculiar" variants would seem less out of place than others. I was originally restricting myself to OP's context ("Are you Mr X?", "I am he"). I just added "It is I" as a credible (if affected) response to Knock! knock! "Who's there?", but I honestly can't get my head around "He is I" in any situation. – FumbleFingers Jan 03 '14 at 23:23
  • @Neil: Assuming Blessed Geek wasn't being facetious with his twice-upvoted comment It is not pretentious and you are confused, we obviously have at least *three* people here who don't agree with your (to me, blindingly obvious) assessment. That I feel is cause for concern. – FumbleFingers Jan 03 '14 at 23:27
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    @Susan: You being a classicist and all that, I'm certainly not going to cross swords with you over rules of grammar. My concern is that we seem to have what looks like a significant minority of participants here defending this usage as "credible, natural, modern English". Since I personally think it has *no* credibility (unless it's deliberately facetious) it concerns me somewhat that either I don't have such a fine ear for language as I thought I had, or there are a lot more "illiterates" here than I would have expected. – FumbleFingers Jan 03 '14 at 23:47
  • "He is Bob". "Bob is he" sounds wrong a) Who is Bob? b) It's me/It's him. A) Are you Bob? B) Yes, I am. ---> I am Bob C) Yes, it's me ---> Bob is me – Mari-Lou A Jan 03 '14 at 23:52

2 Answers2

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He is I is perfectly grammatical. Is (or be, am, are, or any of the forms of be) is an intransitive verb, that is, there is no action of the verb being done to a direct object. Therefore the subject is also being spoken about after the verb.

I am cold. Who is cold? I am. I am seething with anger. Who is angry? I am.

A transitive verb is one in which an action is done to another, the direct object.

Frank hurt me. Hurt is a transitive verb. Frank is the subject, and the direct object is me. Me is the accusative case of I, that is, the case of the direct object.

Since am has no direct object, the subject and what follows are both in the same case. (It happens to be called the nominative case.)

He is I and It is I are fine. Who is it? one might ask of a knock on the door. It is I. or It is I, Harry. are completely correct.

Whether they are completely risible answers does not negate their correctness.

anongoodnurse
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  • Hi is I? Sounds like, Hi! It's I. I'm pretty sure too that "It's me" as a reply to "Who's there?" is grammatical. – Mari-Lou A Jan 03 '14 at 23:09
  • Pope Pullum says we shouldn't associate with people who say things like 'It is I' conversationally. And he co-authored CGEL. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 03 '14 at 23:37
  • @Susan: In the case of OP's specific usage in a specific context, I'd turn that on its head and say It's grammatical, but is it acceptable? To which rhetorical question I would answer that unless the speaker is deliberately being facetious, the answer is a resounding "NO!" – FumbleFingers Jan 03 '14 at 23:37
  • do grammatical there mistakes are, but that judgement also depends on which variety you're discussing. "It's me" is 'correct' in most varieties of English except for maybe the most formal. And there's something about "he is I" that is grating to me. – Mitch Jan 03 '14 at 23:41
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    I don't think your answer is risible in the slightest. I actually think you make a decent case for defending "He is I". My examples were more for my benefit that for yours. I don't see why "He is me" is ungrammatical, that's all. – Mari-Lou A Jan 04 '14 at 00:12
  • Re your last statement: you actually touch on quite a complex area of what it means for a sentence to be 'grammatical' or 'acceptable' (and it depends a little on how you define "correctness"). But something like 'risibility' is actually considered to be a factor in many modern analyses (and arguably comes into play when considering how you deal with sentences such as "The station was left by the train", "Up with which situation did Mary put?"). – Neil Coffey Jan 04 '14 at 00:20
  • Is is not transitive or intransitive. By your argument we should be able to say "I sleep I" because "sleep" is intransitive. Is (be) is a copula. In Latin and some other languages with nominal declension it takes a complement in the nominative (not in all: in Russian the complement is sometimes in the instrumental). In the artificial variety of English which some people insist on, a pronoun in the complement is in the subject form, but in most people's ordinary English it is in the object form. – Colin Fine Jan 04 '14 at 02:05
  • Pope Pullum says we shouldn't associate with people who say things like 'It is I' conversationally. I think your example in your second comment reinforces his view. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 04 '14 at 08:25
  • OK. Maybe we should not associate with people who say, It is I if they have canines instead of lateral incisors. – anongoodnurse Jan 04 '14 at 08:43
  • I don't think anyone would label 'It's the Williamsons' as being incorrect nowadays, though it obviously has (previously?) unconventional concord. There isn't an easy alternative. And 'It's us' is equally acceptable. After all, the 'Use nominal case only, after link verbs' was a relatively recent imposition by (doubtless well-meaning) grammarians. Since there is no appointed arbiter in these areas, it makes sense to go with common usage rather than maintain nostalgic pseudo-rules just for the sake of it. Otherwise, the first historical practice should still be mandatory. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 04 '14 at 12:08
  • @Susan That's not necessarily a given. (Though I still don't know how you're defining "correctness", which isn't really a linguistic term as such.) – Neil Coffey Jan 04 '14 at 17:09
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"He is I"—not grammatical. I follow the verb: "He is me," which is correct...and wonky. This preacher should've kept it simple: "I am Jesus."

mcormc
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  • Well-played... "I follow the verb". – Mitch Jan 03 '14 at 22:48
  • When would you suggest that I read about intransitive verbs, Susan? I suggest that you drop "would" from your suggestion.

    You probably agree that the following is grammatical.

    "It is me."

     – mcormc Jan 04 '14 at 00:02
  • Mcormc: I agree that He is me is grammatical, but people who use the word "correct" in this context often don't think so. (I guess that when @Susan says "I certainly misuse me all the time" (in a comment to the question), she means that she thinks that "It it me" is not correct). I agree with FumbleFingers that "He is I" is awkward and bizarre, but not ungrammatical. But I can't work out what you mean when you say "I follow the verb". – Colin Fine Jan 04 '14 at 01:58
  • @ColinFine Jesus' followers are asked to follow the verb or the "word". It's a biblical reference. – Mari-Lou A Jan 04 '14 at 10:13