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I know we use "you and me" in an object case. But I think in this song, "you and me " is a subject. Lyrics are as follow:

You and me
From one world
We are family
Travel dream
A thousand miles meeting in Beijing
Come together
Put your hand in mine
You and me
From one world
We are family

Is it right to use "you and me" here? Or it is used here so the song rhymes?

Laurel
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Jojo
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  • Obviously me rhymes with the ending of family. To say more is to read the mind of the songwriter. What kind of utterance is "travel dream"? Don't try to parse these lyrics so closely. Lyric and music are art. We also use "you and me' as a nominative phrase in informal English. – Arm the good guys in America Dec 11 '19 at 04:04
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    The rule that "I" is always used in an object is often taught, but isn't actually true about English. Only a pedant would answer, "Who did it?" with "I" rather than "Me." (Of course, anyone would say, "I did it.") "You and I" would probably flow less here than "You and me" does. – Mike Graham Dec 11 '19 at 07:05
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    Does this answer your question? Which is correct: "you and I" or "you and me"? – curiousdannii Dec 11 '19 at 12:34
  • But in this case, the lyrics doubtless comprise 'stream of consciousness' writing, which ignores constraints of grammar, punctuation, and even well considered structure. So this is an unsuitable question for ELU. // 'Me and her are married' etc in everyday speech has already been addressed on ELU. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 19 '23 at 14:11
  • What evidence do you have of its being stream of consciousness? The lack of punctuation does not make it so, any more than speech must be ungrammatical because it also lacks them. – Mary Dec 19 '23 at 23:21
  • @Mary. Sentence fragments are nowadays considered quite acceptable in informal contexts (conversation, fiction, poetry ...) by many writers, even authorities. I could suggest << You and me. From one world, we are family.>> But then I'd wager neither of us would like to put the rest into uncontestable sentences or fragments that preserve intended meaning. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 19 '23 at 23:46
  • Irrelevant to the question of whether it can be parsed grammatically. – Mary Dec 20 '23 at 00:05

2 Answers2

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short answer: Yes, it's fine. It's an abbreviation for 'the party consisting of you and me'. (The rhyme is merely a happy coincidence.)

long answer: “Me and her are married.”

Schoolmarms object that this is ungrammatical, but this kind of thing is said all the time by native speakers of English. Now, whatever usage native speakers make of a language (sufficiently often, of course, not just as an occasional joke), is BY DEFINITION correct! So, let’s not let the tail wag the dog. It is up to us to explain the acceptability of the sentence, not to ‘explain away’ the sentence by simply declaring it to be ungrammatical (or by declaring the proposed alternative as being "pretentious sounding, but correct").

There's nothing wrong with being a pedant, but there is something wrong about being wrong. The two nominative expressions "Me and her" and "She and I" are NOT synonymous. They are both grammatical, but have not only different meanings, but also, of course, different registers. The former, being an abbreviation for "The party consisting of me and her" has lower register, simply by virtue of being an abbreviation. The notion of "party" implies "togetherness", and "togetherness" is an essential part of what is being conveyed. (If abbreviations are not recognized and taken into account as such, an endless train of anomalies and paradoxes results.) Perhaps consideration of an old joke will make it even clearer. old joke: A. "She and I are married." B: "To each other?"; but "Me and her are married." leaves no invitation for such a rejoinder.

To give another example:

The two sentences, "Me and her are going shopping this afternoon." and "She and I are going shopping this afternoon." are not synonymous. The former clearly implies that we are going together, but the latter leaves open the possibility that separate trips are intended.

“Me and her are going shopping this afternoon.” is simply and abbreviation for, “The members of the party consisting of me and her want to go shopping together this afternoon.” - perfectly grammatical, but who wants to say such a mouthful when, “Me and her are going shopping this afternoon.” is a perfectly understandable abbreviation of it?

This also shows that the shoot-from-the-hip advice of omitting part of a sentence in order to analyze what is left is just more schoolmarm mush-headed thinking, much like killing the golden goose in order to find out what makes it work. We don’t say, “Me am going shopping this afternoon.” because there is no question of togetherness. But we do say, "It’s me." in answer to the query, "Who is it?" because the person asking has no way of knowing how many people are involved, and so "party" mode is defaulted to (much like a set of exactly one element in Mathematics - called a ‘singleton’). Of course, if one is making an entrance, "I", followed by an exalted name, is appropriate: "It is I, Don Quixote!" – or if the passage is part of an exalted speech, the nominative is appropriate, as in the Shakespearian line, "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;".

Captions, such as for photographs, are similarly explained. Everyone recognizes in their gut that "Susan and me" is correct and appropriate as a caption (being an abbreviation for, "Hey, everybody, this is a photograph of (the party consisting of) Susan and me!"), and that "Susan and I" feels like fingernails scratching a blackboard, because for such a photograph the "togetherness" motif is primary, not secondary as in a sentence such as "Me and her are married." - and the construction "Susan and I" negates that togetherness, just as a random photograph in the wild might happen to capture both a bear and a squirrel at the same time.

Note that telling a complete item from an abbreviated item can require context, and the two might not be synonymous. For example ‘gas’ as a complete item refers to natural gas, but as an abbreviation refers to gasoline. Another case requiring context is the expression “I could care less.”. As a complete item it means that the speaker does care to some degree, but as an abbreviation it means “If you think I could care less, you are mistaken.” – which is a much more powerful put-down than “I couldn’t care less.” – similar to the difference between “Hell, no.” and merely “No.”

EulerSpoiler
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    Me, I don't disagree, but do you know of a contemporary grammar that treats the subject in this manner? – TimR Dec 19 '23 at 12:06
  • @TimR: No, I don't, but, FWIW, here's additional evidence: "Me and Halsey and Nimitz Are anchored in Tokyo Bay" – EulerSpoiler Dec 20 '23 at 15:08
  • @TimR: another piece of evidence: The line ""Tonight," said the general, "we will hunt—you and I."" in Richard Connell's 'The Most Dangerous Game': "you and me" would mean that they were as a team together hunting some prey, which is the virtual opposite of what is meant here. – EulerSpoiler Dec 22 '23 at 13:10
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Let us analyze the sentence:

You and me from one world, we are family

The subject is "We". The "You and me" are an appositive. (Most appositives follow the subject, but they can precede it.)

When a pronoun is an appositive, it goes in the objective form. (Examples, and references here.)

For instance, a man could say

She and I are married

but

Her and me, we're married.

Mary
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  • But 'the sentence' isn't present as such in the original (which lacks all punctuation apart from capitalisation of line starts and the proper noun). The lyrics look like they comprise 'stream of consciousness' writing, which ignores constraints of grammar, punctuation, and even well considered structure. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 19 '23 at 14:09
  • Neither does speech have punctuation marks. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to analyze whether speech is grammatical. – Mary Dec 19 '23 at 23:20
  • But OP doesn't ask about the narrower concept of grammaticality (and even there, Svartvik & Greenwald have shown that there are sentences where grammarians are divided on the grammaticality of various sentences) ... they ask about the more general concept of acceptability. Song lyrics, often not lending themselves to normal parsing, are usually off-topic on ELU. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 19 '23 at 23:40
  • Uses neither word but talks about subject -- so grammar, not "acceptability." – Mary Dec 20 '23 at 00:06
  • 'Is it correct' is the overarching question, and needs addressing. Grammaticality isn't mandatory in certain contexts, including poetry and lyrics (though I certainly prefer clarity and reasonable grammar). – Edwin Ashworth Dec 20 '23 at 13:54
  • In what context other than grammar does it mean anything to discuss whether a sentence is correct? – Mary Dec 20 '23 at 23:22
  • Orwell's sixth law (avoid the unnatural-sounding) / Gricean maxims (avoid ambiguity etc) . But that's skewing the debate in any case: we're not dealing with sentences here. 'How to stop smoking' is a fragment, not a grammatical sentence, but is quite acceptable in certain contexts. As are "Hello", "On the table", "The fourth of July", 'Yeah, yeah, yeah'.... – Edwin Ashworth Dec 21 '23 at 14:31
  • Neither of those admit of correctness because whether something is unnatural sounding or ambiguous is a matter of opinion. And whether these are sentences is what you are arguing FOR and therefore can not be your premise. – Mary Dec 21 '23 at 23:46
  • But as I said, Svartvik and Greenwald assert that grammatical correctness is also at times a matter of opinion. // The communication of correct ways of handling the English language is the whole aim of ELU. Labelling usages in strings below sentence level 'incorrect' because they're not in 'grammatically correct sentences' is unhelpful and misleading. Sentence fragments are in common use. Also, I don't see how one can insist that 'You and me / From one world / We are family' is intended as a sentence rather than connected thought-expressions when the next two or three lines obviously aren't. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 22 '23 at 00:16
  • One could equally well suggest ''You and me are from one world. We are family" (some registers allow 'me' as subject). – Edwin Ashworth Dec 22 '23 at 00:22
  • Interpolating a word shows that the suggestion is not, in fact, equal. – Mary Dec 22 '23 at 00:37