Thursday, July 06, 2006

Avoiding Work - Part Deux

Grammar Quiz!!!!

How did you score ?

I scored 90%..... I messed up the first question :

Q: 1. Would you like to come to the game with Fred and _____?

See normally I would say 'me', but then again I would never say "Stephane and I" in real life... I don't know anyone who really says that. (Although they may write it.)

Heather! Help! Someone explain to me the "me and I" rule ?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got 90%, too. Got the one with infer/imply wrong, I guess I have to look that one up in my english books since i'm not really sure what the rules are :-)

Anonymous said...

The way "me/I" was explained to me is this: if you take out the other person's name, how would you refer to yourself? So, "Would you like to play a game with ___?" would be "me".

The way infer/imply was explained to me is that imply is leading to a conclusion and infer is drawing that conclusion. I can't think how to explain it better...when referring to something else, you are implying. When you draw the conclusion about something else, you are inferring. I know...clear as mud! LOL

Anonymous said...

Normally, when there's 2 or more people, and you don't know if it's we/us him/he me/I, best rule of thumb is to pretend that there's only 1... so "Do you want to go with Fred and ___" would be "Do you want to go with ME"... so it should be Fred and me... I think at least. Now I'm doubting myself. *laughs*

Heather said...

Everyone else has explained it really well in layman's terms.

There are three different cases of pronouns in English: nominative, objective and possessive.

Possessive is the easiest to explain - it's when someone owns something. "Is that *his* hat?" His is obviously possessive.

Nominative is if the pronoun is the subject of the clause, which gets complicated if you have a subordinate clause, like this: "Nancy and *I* went to the movie, which *she* thought was terrible."

Both "I" and "she" are subjects; I is the subject of the independent clause, while "she" is the subject of the subordinate adjective clause that starts with "which."

Objective seems to be the one that most people struggle with. Any time you have someone receiving an action ("Please pass *her* the remote") or the object of a preposition ("Do you want to go out with *me*?"), you use the objective case. In that last instance, "with" is your preposition.

Does that make sense?

Nancy said...

Absolutely none whatsoever! LOL but thanks anyway hehehe Wow, I remember struggling with this in french grammar class. (Pronouns, clauses, subordinates, object etc.) I can't wrap my head around it. I always did excellent anyway, exept when I had to *identify* the subordinate or the object etc. I never ever got it. I guess I should get a grammar for dummies book... but then again I'm not sure I understand why an object or a clause needs to be identified. Why can't we just write like we normally write and just make the use of "me and I" illegal ? :P

Anonymous said...

I used to have the same problem with german and english grammar. I'm pretty good at both languages, to the point that I could teach them in a sort of informal way (conversation classes, which I've dabbled in before), but I just can't wrap my head around the rules. I can tell you *that* a sentence is wrong, and how it's supposed to be done instead, but I can't tell you *why* LOL

PS: thanks roseann for the explanation of infer/imply. Made perfect sense.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and don't get me started on french grammar. How did anyone ever come up with that subjonctif?!? Grr... I can do it, but jeez, they really couldn't make a language more difficult LOL