Grammar- when do I use 'I' and when 'Me'?

Answer 1

when you re-do the 3rd grade

Answer 2

This is a very legitimate question, as people have been arguing over this question since the 1700s. (I'm assuming you're a native speaker of English, right?)

Grammarians in the 1700s noticed that there was variation in the way that people used "I" and "me" in English. While linguists today do not necessarily see variation as a bad thing, the grammarians of that time thought that variation was bad and thought that it was necessary to create a system that made everyone speak exactly the same way. Therefore, they created a system of rules to tell us when to use these pronouns.

Their system was based on Latin, so they described English grammar the same way they were used to describing Latin grammar. They made the pronoun rules based on what role the pronoun in question played in a sentence. Therefore, the rules say that, if the pronoun in question is the subject of a sentence, you should use "I", and if the pronoun in question is an object (a direct object, indirect object, or object of a preposition), you should use "me".

Of course, many English speakers of the time did not read the books the grammarians were writing and continued what they were doing, that is, communicating just fine in English. As a result, English still has variation in these pronouns today.

In fact, the pronoun system has even more variation than just "I" and "me", since "myself" is also an option that comes up, depending on the gender and status of the speaker.

The upshot of all this for you, the native speaker of English, is that you can be aware that, most of the time, people don't even notice if you "break" the rules in these pronouns. (A few sticklers on this site might claim that such "violations" bother them, but I suspect that they hear them all the time without noticing. In general, people are largely unaware of their language behavior and the language behavior of people around them.) If you are writing for an audience that you believe will judge you for your pronouns, follow the rule that I've given above (the subject-object rule). Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it much if I were you.

Answer 3

There are two situations where this question comes up.

1) In a compound expression "Bob and I" /"Bob and me". The first is used for a subject ("Bob and I went to the store.") The latter is used as an object ("She told Bob and me about it.")

Most people get this right when the "I" or "me" stand alone, but get confused with the compound. (I believe this is probably from being drilled in grade school to correct their incorrect use of "Bob and me" as subject. "No, it's 'Bob and I'!" Drilling without explanation led many to say "Bob and I" in ALL cases, without knowing the rule/reason.)

Some folks tell you to remove the "Bob and" to get it right. This usually works. But if you have trouble with doing this on the fly, it might help to take note of any PREPOSITIONS used before the expression, since much (most?) of the time when you need "Bob and ME" it comes after a preposition. ("She gave it TO Bob and me.")

2) Simple declarations like "It's me" and "Not me". Many tell us us that "It is I" is always THE correct form, and that "Not I" often is. BUT in spoken English it has long been considered perfectly acceptable (often preferable) to say such things as "Not me" and "It's me". The other forms, especially, "It is I", sound "stuffy", or at least awkward, to most people.

The problem is that English, unlike many other European languages, makes VERY little use of case distinctions (subject, object, etc). Rather, we emphasize syntax and word order -- these together with prepositions clarify relationships between things in places where other languages use case endings.

Now in LATIN (which English is NOT!!) a pair of nouns/pronouns connected by "copulative" verbs like "to be" are supposed to take the same case. But given our very limited use of case in English, this distinction is not very meaningful for our language. POSITION or WORD order is more important. And so we tend, rather naturally, to treat the following constructions the same way.

"It hit me."
"It was me."

That is, we use "me" ("us", etc) when it appears in the usual position (after the verb) where the object is placed.


A more formal explanation, from Greenbaum & Quirk, A Student's Grammar of the English Language:

"Case in personal pronouns involves a distinction absent from nouns, marking broadly the grammatical roles of subject and object. . . . The choice of subjective and objective forms does not depend solely upon the strict grammatical distinction between subject and object. Rather, usage shows that we are concerned more with subject 'territory' (the pre-verbal part of a clause) in contrast to object 'territory' (the post-verbal part of the clause)."
http://www.englishforums.com/English/50693/Print.htm

Answer 4

Both are first person singular pronouns. Use "I" when it is the subject of a sentence. Use "me" when it is the direct or indirect object of a sentence.

I went to town. Subject is I.

Bring this to me. Indirect object is me.

Take me to this. Direct object is me.

The same rule holds true when there are mutliple subjects, direct objects, or indirect objects.

Joe and I went to town.

Bring this to Joe and me.

Take Joe and me to this.

In addition you use I as the chemical symbol for Iodine and use
Me as an abbreviation for Maine.

Answer 5

Well - think of it this way: You would not say, "Me took out the trash." - unless you wanted to sound like a two year old or Tarzan. You would say, "I took out the trash."

When you say, "Carol and I went to the show." - you will know that is right by just dropping Carol's name and saying to yourself - "I went to the show." See how easy that is?????

Test it out - it works every time. Good luck.

Answer 6

I is the nominative and used as a subject, and me is accusative case and used as the object of the verb or infinitive..

Answer 7

Say the phrase is Micheal and ____ went to the store, and you have to put in the correct word. Start with the blank and say to yourself I went to the store and Me went to the store. I sounds better so you plug it in instead of me.

Answer 8

The 2nd & 3rd answers are the easiest way to figure it out.