4

Both:

I and my neighbour went to the races

and:

My neighbour and I went to the races

are commonly used. However in the plural I've only ever seen the form:

We and the neighbours went to the races

The other form:

The neighbours and we went to the races

sounds drastically wrong for some reason I can't articulate, but I don't think it violates any grammatical rules. Is My neighbours and we incorrect in this context, or does it seem strange simply because it isn't commonly used?

John Rennie
  • 571
  • We and my? I think you are looking for us and our – mplungjan Oct 22 '14 at 09:43
  • See related previous posts.

    First person comes last. You before I.

    It's not grammar, though. Just politeness.

     – Kris Oct 22 '14 at 09:43
  • Duplicate? http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5995/bob-and-us-or-bob-and-we-or-bob-and-ourselves – mplungjan Oct 22 '14 at 09:44
  • 1
    @mplungjan: surely us and the neighbours went ... and the neighbours and us went ... are both wrong because us is the accusative. – John Rennie Oct 22 '14 at 10:06
  • @JohnRennie That's a debated topic in English grammar. There are grammarians that argue coordinated subject pronouns go in the accusative. – user0721090601 Oct 22 '14 at 11:11
  • Either way is pretty unattractive. What's wrong with "We went to the races with the neighbours"? Or, if you subscribe to the notion that others must always precede, "The neighbours came to the races with us"... – walkytalky Oct 22 '14 at 11:13
  • @guifa: do you have a reference for this? Admittedly my English grammar lessons were around forty years ago, but your claim cotradicts what I was taught then. – John Rennie Oct 22 '14 at 11:16
  • 1
    @walkytalky: your point was raised in an answer that's now been deleted. I agree, and I wouldn't use the form we and xxx. However my question isn't about style but whether xxx and we is grammatically incorrect. – John Rennie Oct 22 '14 at 11:18
  • @JohnRennie Our neighbours went to the races with us or Our neighbours and we went to the races but never We and my ... as it was when I commented – mplungjan Oct 22 '14 at 11:31
  • @JohnRennie: gulfa was referring to a kind of grammar which would not have been taught in your school forty years ago: descriptive grammar which is about what people actually say and write, rather than about what somebody has decided they should say and write. Joseph Emonds refers to the insistence on I and we here as a "grammatically deviant prestige construction", because it requires a kind of linguistic analysis - "nominative" vs "accusative" - which is not accessible to an unschooled English speaker (unlike, say, an unschooled German speaker). – Colin Fine Oct 22 '14 at 12:26
  • And my answer to the original question (which I'm putting in as a comment not an answer, because it is just my personal theory) is that The neighbours and we sounds wrong because we haven't had generations of teachers and parents drumming it into us the way we have Johnny and I. Why have we had the latter? Because somebody decided at some point that it was rude to mention ourselves first, and somebody else decided that English, which isn't Latin, should be as much as possible like Latin, and told us we mustn't say me and Johnny. They never did this with "we" because it's so much rarer. – Colin Fine Oct 22 '14 at 12:34

1 Answers1

3

It doesn't appear that any answer is forthcoming, so I'll post what I think is the consensus amongst the commenters as an answer.

There is nothing grammatically wrong with the construction:

The neighbours and we went to the races

but it's ugly, and in practice you would use an alternative form like We went to the races with the neighbours.

I cannot find any definitive statement on the subject. The nearest I found is on the blog written by Patricia T. O’Conner, who is the author of several grammar books. She addresses the question in this blog article and states that she believes it to be grammatically correct though she can't find a supporting authority either.

John Rennie
  • 571