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Possible Duplicate:
When do I use “I” instead of “me?”

A friend of mine asked me for advice about an e-mail he was writing. There was a sentence like this:

I and my partners we are interested in investing in your product.

I figured it was wrong, so I suggested:

I and my partners are interested in investing in your product.

This looks grammatical to me but sounds strange. Also, I have seen a lot of people writing this:

Me and my partners we are interested in investing in your product.

which I believe is not grammatical.

So, which one of the options above is correct? Also, what would be a better choice of words?

Community
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brandizzi
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    I and someone is grammatical; me and someone is not strictly grammatical, but is very common; I and someone we is not grammatical, and sounds wrong to native English speakers. – Peter Shor Feb 29 '12 at 14:12
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    also related: Which is correct, “you and I” or “you and me”? – aedia λ Feb 29 '12 at 16:48
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    Your last sentence is perfectly grammatical, despite what others have said, providing you use a comma to set off the appositive: “Me and my partners, we are interested in your product.” See my answer for details. It’s consider polite to put yourself last, but grammatically it can go eit her way. – tchrist Feb 29 '12 at 16:48
  • @FumbleFingers: that question is asking something entirely different than this one. The point of this question is not the I/me distinction, but the peculiar repeated pronoun in constructions such as "Him and I, we [did such and such]". – Marthaª Feb 29 '12 at 20:09
  • I think it's important not to hijack the word "grammatical" when what is really meant is "advocated by some prescriptivists"... – Neil Coffey Feb 29 '12 at 20:11
  • Marthaª: Apart from Jay (incorrectly) saying the repetition/recasting of "Me and my partners" as "we" was "incorrect", I don't see anyone else addressing that point. All it needed was a comma between the two "equated" noun clauses. But I guess in the end you and I, we just don't see eye to eye on such matters. – FumbleFingers Feb 29 '12 at 23:19

5 Answers5

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"I and someone are interested" is grammatically correct. It is the convention in English that when you list several people including yourself, you put yourself last, so you really should say "Someone and I are interested." "Someone and I" is the subject of the sentence, so you should use the subjective case "I" rather than the objective "me". "Someone and I" clearly means two people, so you should use "are" and not "is". If it was "Someone or I ..." then you would use "is", because only one person is interested, either "someone" or "I".

It is not uncommon to hear people say "Me and someone are ...", but this is wrong because it's the wrong case. When an educated person hears "Me and Billy is going to the ball game", he immediately thinks this is either a child or a very uneducated person speaking.

"I and someone we ..." is incorrect because it is redundant. "We" is simply another way of saying "I and someone". It adds no new information to the sentence, and so there is no reason to include it. You can't just string together alternative ways of expressing the same idea: If you really need it for clarity or emphasis, you have to surround it with some additional words, like a "that is", or sometimes just punctuation that show its purpose in the sentence. You could say, "We, that is, Bob and I, are interested ..."

All that said, "I and someone" or "Someone and I" sounds strange to me, and I suspect most English speakers, because it is an unusual use of the word "someone". When "someone" is used in a list with identifiers of other people, we usually say "someone else". Like, "Bob and someone else are interested ..." rather than "Bob and someone are interested ..." (I have no idea why this is so; it's just the convention.) "Someone" without "else" is normally only used when it's the only person: "Someone is interesteed ..."

Jay
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    This - what I said, but articulated better. +1 – Rory Alsop Feb 29 '12 at 15:09
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    I disagree with your second paragraph. I think "Me and my dad went to a ball game" sounds colloquial, but not childish or uneducated. – ruakh Feb 29 '12 at 18:21
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    To address the part of the question about a better turn of phrase, I would say "My partners and I are..." –  Feb 29 '12 at 20:49
  • @ruakh: To be clear, "Me and my dad went to a ball game" is grammatically incorrect, but I agree that the disapproving tone in that paragraph is a touch strong. Worse, the "example" changes from "Me and someone are" to "Me and Billy is" (emphasis mine) which makes the criticism muddy: Are we still harping on the Me or are we saying that having two errors in a sentence is pushing into severely uneducated territory? – John Y Feb 29 '12 at 23:13
  • @Joshua Agree. "Someone and I" (or "I and someone") sound very strange to me, but I can't put my finger on a rule that this violates. – Jay Mar 01 '12 at 15:05
  • @ruakh Well, obviously a subjective point. This is a grammar error that the teachers I had when I was a kid were very quick to correct. When writers want to create dialog that sounds like it's coming from a child, it seems to me that this is a common grammer error to use. Yes, that's anecdotal. Anyway, I'm not sure that there's much to be gained from debating how uneducated this or that grammar error sounds. I'd avoid all grammar errors that do not serve a deliberate purpose. – Jay Mar 01 '12 at 15:11
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    @Jay: Of course, even calling it "a grammar error" is a subjective point. – ruakh Mar 01 '12 at 15:43
  • When you say "I and Bill" you are turning yourself from a singular subject to part of a plural. There is no a-priori reason that you shouldn't change "I" to "me" during this transformation. To form a plural subject including yourself, people use "me", and to my ears it is an illiterate hypercorrection bordering on the mentally deranged to say "I and Bill are working late". You should say "Me and Bill are working late", or "Bill and me are working late." These are the only correct constructions. For the answer to the specific question asked here, see "Me and my shadow..." – Ron Maimon Mar 02 '12 at 06:40
  • @Ron There is a very good a priori reason why you should not change "I" to "me": "I" is used for a subject; "me" is used for an object. Turning the subject from singular to plural does not change the fact that it is the subject. You can find many sources for this rule on the Internet. Here's the first that I turned up in a Yahoo search: http://robin.hubpages.com/hub/Grammar_Mishaps__I_versus_Me RE "Me and my shadow", song lyrics and poetry are not the best sources for proper grammar. They often break the rules to achieve a certain rhyme or cadence. – Jay Mar 02 '12 at 16:02
  • @ruakh The grammar error I was referring to was using "me" for a subject. That is not subjective: that's a well-established grammar rule. – Jay Mar 02 '12 at 16:05
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    @Jay: I know exactly what you're referring to, and it's completely subjective. "Prescriptive grammar", with its penchant for rules based on abstract logic, on foreign languages, on historical usage, on formal written usage, and on personal whim, generally considers it an error. (In this case, the usual justification is abstract logic: we say "I went" and "he went", not *"me went" and *"him went", so supposedly this means that we should have to say "he and I went" instead of "me and him went".) But "descriptive grammar", which attempts to determine the rules by which people [continued] – ruakh Mar 02 '12 at 16:17
  • [continued] actually speak, recognizes that "me and him went" is grammatical even though *"me went" and *"him went" are not. (The power of science!) – ruakh Mar 02 '12 at 16:18
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    Well, folks on this site have had this debate on other questions, so I'll make one further comment and drop it. (Feel free to get the last word.) It is certainly true that "rules of grammar" are not like "laws of physics" in that if everybody agrees to speak and write a different way, then by definition the rules of grammar change. But it doesn't matter how many people vote to make perpetual motion machines work: they still won't work. That said, if you go by the theory that "grammar" is just an observation of what people actually say, and does not and need not embody any coherent rules ... – Jay Mar 02 '12 at 21:59
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    ... then to say that a sentence is grammatically correct is a tautology. You've just declared that ANYTHING that ANYBODY says is grammatically correct by definition. Why even have a site like this? If somebody said it, ipso facto it's part of "human language" and therefore correct. Sometimes people will advocate an opposite extreme: That because someone who declared himself an authority wrote in a book that such-and-such a rule applies, that that makes it so. I opt for a middle ground: Respect long-established rules unless and until there is good reason to change them. Adhere to rules that ... – Jay Mar 02 '12 at 22:05
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    ... are logical and consistent. When the overwhelming majority of speakers and writers, especially those who are literate and well-educated, speak and write in a certain way, that becomes the de facto standard, but we should be slow to declare the rules null and void just because many people aren't following them -- especially if they're not following them only in causual speech. Etc. (In this case, few educated people say "Me and him went to the store." Even by the "observe it in the wild" criteria I don't think this passes muster.) – Jay Mar 02 '12 at 22:09
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    @Jay - Thank you. This is a great wording of what I've long failed to describe for those people who have such a hard time recognizing grammar and standards as things that do exist, and not just because some self-appointed curmudgeon said so. – bubbleking May 23 '22 at 21:14
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To add to the other answers, a trick for the native speaker to see whether to use "I" or "me" in a sentence is to take away the "someone" from the sentence and see which option sounds best.

Do we say

My partners and I are interested in investing in your product,

or

My partners and me are interested in investing in your product?

Take away "My partners" and see which one sounds best:

I am interested in investing in your product,

or

Me am interested in investing in your product?

The first option sounds best, so we say

My partners and I are interested in investing in your product.

EDIT:

I should have known this trick was already on this site... See the linked questions.

George Duckett
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Michael Sandler
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  • +1 This is a good rule of thumb, but not a grammatical rule. – Marcin Feb 29 '12 at 19:00
  • Of course it only works if the person realizes that "Me am interested" is not correct. But many people do immediately realize that that is wrong, but when the subject is made more complex, they get confused. (i.e. I agree it's a handy brain helper, but it doesn't prove anything.) – Jay Feb 29 '12 at 20:43
  • The problem is that changing from a singular to a plural moves the subject node from "I" to "Bill and I". I am not convinced that when "I" is not the subject node that it isn't treated as any other instance of "I" that is not a subject, and converted to "me". So "Bill and me ask your permission" is probably the only correct construction, while "Bill and I" is an incorrect hypercorrection (which sounds good today, because people have been brainwashed to do it by this phony rule for a long time now). – Ron Maimon Mar 02 '12 at 06:43
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Let me add one possibility no one has mentioned: an appositive.

  • Bill and Mark, they’re good chaps.
  • Me, I’m thinking of staying.
  • Me myself, I’m thinking of staying.
  • Your father and me, we’re thinking of staying.
  • My partners and me, we’re interested in investing in your product.

All those are grammatical.

The first part of the appositive is not even in the nominative case for pronouns. It might not even be reflexive even if it includes the speaker.

You see this sort of construct in French, too, where the pronoun case for the appositive works the same as in English, deviating from the nominative:

  • Moi, je pense que ...
  • Moi même, je pense que ...
  • Ton père et moi, nous allons ...

In Spanish, however, the nominative is used for the appositive, unlike in English or French:

  • Yo, yo pienso que ...
  • Yo mismo, yo pienso que ...
  • Tu padre y yo, nosotros vamos ...

Can’t tell you why.

tchrist
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  • I think this is commonly seen but in my opinion it's only grammatical (in many cases) if it has a comma, unlike the examples in the original question which lack it. – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Feb 29 '12 at 17:37
  • @Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Of course a careful writer controls his comma placement, but speakers do not. Transcribed speech is often lacking the little niceties of formal written language. I would never call My partners and me we’re interested in investing in your product. without the comma agrammatical; merely a bit sloppy. – tchrist Feb 29 '12 at 17:46
  • @tchrist I'm sorry to bring up an old thread, but I don't understand how this is grammatical. I was always under the notion that appositive take the place of what they represent. – AJK432 Jan 09 '19 at 21:46
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I was always taught that you should always put yourself last, which means the correct grammar here is none of your options, but instead it should be:

Someone and I are interested in investing in your product.

The options including "we" are not correct - that structure just doesn't make sense here.

Rory Alsop
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    That's a silly rule, and it has nothing to do with grammar. – Chel Feb 29 '12 at 14:51
  • Actually it does - it is the correct way to order pronouns. You wouldn't say I and Eric were racing - you'd say Eric and I were racing. – Rory Alsop Feb 29 '12 at 14:58
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    @RoryAlsop: 'I and Eric' and 'Eric and I' are equally grammatical. Which you use is a matter of style, convention and courtesy, not of grammar. – Barrie England Feb 29 '12 at 15:04
  • I would argue that in this case the convention in English is equivalent to grammar. I am prepared to be educated otherwise. – Rory Alsop Feb 29 '12 at 15:09
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    @rdhs It's the common convention in English. Whether it's strictly "grammar" or more like etiquette, it's the way English is normally spoken and written. You are, of course, free to ignore rules of grammar and of etiquette that you don't like. But bear in mind that when you break rules without a clear justification, a small number of people will praise you for your avant guard cleverness and sophistication ... but the majority will think you ignorant and/or rude. In this case, it's no more effort to say "Bob and I" than to say "I and Bob", so why not just do it? – Jay Feb 29 '12 at 15:14
  • @Jay Sure, I follow it by default in case someone is deeply offended by their pronoun's ordering. But not treating it as an absolute rule of grammar allows one to avoid awkwardness like other members of JNAS and I or he shot the postman as well and me. – Chel Feb 29 '12 at 15:25
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    @Rory Alsop: ‘The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’ confirms that when ‘I’ is used in coordination with a noun or another pronoun, ‘politeness dictates that it comes second’. Politeness, not grammar. The article continues ‘These conventions apply in standard written texts, although they may be relaxed in conversation. They also tend to be set aside when ‘I’ is coupled with a bulky coordinate.’ – Barrie England Feb 29 '12 at 15:28
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    @BarrieEngland Maybe so, but any teacher of English who does not teach these sort of conventions is, I think, not doing his job. Like, "Jack is a " is completely grammatically correct, but surely an English teacher who does not make clear that this phrasing is considered extremely rude in most contexts is seriously mis-informing his students. (And may be responsible for resultant social condemnation and physical injuries.) – Jay Feb 29 '12 at 15:29
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    @Jay: Nobody will praise you for being 'avant guard'; avant garde, possibly. (Actually, I agree with you; but you have to be especially careful with your English when correcting somebody.) – Tim Lymington Feb 29 '12 at 15:31
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    @Jay You really think I and a friend is on the level of a racial slur? – Chel Feb 29 '12 at 15:33
  • @Jay: Indeed, but teachers should also make it clear that it's not a matter of grammar. – Barrie England Feb 29 '12 at 15:33
  • In this case, I think I and someone else is, as Jay says in his answer, is clearly better. – Peter Shor Feb 29 '12 at 15:39
  • @Peter - Jay pointed out it should be Someone else and I – Rory Alsop Feb 29 '12 at 15:45
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    @Rory: To me, someone else sounds funny if you put it before I. – Peter Shor Feb 29 '12 at 15:51
  • @rdhs RE "'I and a friend' on the level of a racial slur" Of course not. What I was trying to say was that they are both examples of things that people learning English should learn that are not grammar rules. My point was that to use language well sometimes you need to know more than just grammar and dictionary definitions. You need to know style, language etiqueete, connotations of words, etc. I took an extreme example to make the point. – Jay Feb 29 '12 at 20:52
  • @TimLymington +1 for garde vs guard, even if it was me you were criticizing. I hang my head in shame. Silly mistake. – Jay Feb 29 '12 at 20:54
  • @rdhs, is it any less silly than choosing to use vous rather than tu? – codeinthehole Feb 29 '12 at 21:21
  • This whole discussion is ludicrous. If anyone were to say "I and [another party did something]" I would assume that English simply wasn't their first language. "[Someone] and I" rolls off the tongue, and the inverse sounds infinitely awkward. What are they teaching in schools these days (or, I guess, back in 2012)?! – bubbleking May 23 '22 at 21:21
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Describe the other person: 'A colleague / a friend / a business associate and I are interested in investing in your product.'

Barrie England
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    That would certainly be better. But I don't think "someone" is grammatically incorrect, just unusual and unnecessarily vague. Well, it could be appropriate if the "someone" who is investing wants to remain anonymous for some reason. – Jay Feb 29 '12 at 15:06
  • @Jay: I’m not at all sure that the use of ‘someone’ in this context is grammatical. Neither the Corpus of Contemporary American English nor the British National Corpus has any records of ‘some’ being used in coordination with ‘I’. – Barrie England Feb 29 '12 at 15:20
  • I used "someone" as a placeholder, this is not the real sentence (which uses "my partners" in place of "someone"). – brandizzi Feb 29 '12 at 15:24
  • I agree that "someone" sounds very awkward here. But I'm hard pressed to think of a rule that it violates. Is there such a rule, or is it just ... not done? (In speech I'd probably say something more like "Another guy and I are ...". But that wouldn't do for formal writing.) – Jay Feb 29 '12 at 20:46