Bit confused about grammar... I was just watching an old episode of?

Question

Dawson's Creek and in a particular scence Dawson's mother says "What is happening between Bob and I..." then Dawson corrects her and says no "that is not grammatically correct what you mean is Bob and me".....
Why would it be "Bob and me" and not "Bob and I"? Perplexed and possbily needing to go back to school now! LOL

Answer 1

The easy test for whether it should be 'me' or 'I' is to take the other person out of the sentence and see if it still makes sense. In your example - take Bob out of the sentence to make:

What is happening to me?
or
What is happening to I?

Now you know which is correct.

Another example:
You and me should go to the park.
gives
Me go to the park
or
I go to the park

'You and I should go to the park' is correct.

Answer 2

This question comes up so often on Yahoo! Answers. It's a question that English speakers have been asking, actually, for hundreds of years.

According to the grammar rules, you are supposed to use "I" when the phrase in question is the subject of these sentence, and you are supposed to use "me" when the phrase in question is an object, like in the following sentences.

Bob and I are going to the store now. (subject)
Please hug Bob and me. (direct object)
Please give Bob and me lots of Christmas presents. (indirect object)
Please go to the party with Bob and me. (object of a preposition)

A good trick for native speakers to remember is that you can remove the part that is joined with "and". Whatever pronoun makes sense without the and-material will also follow the rule when it's put back in.

For example, let's say you can't decide about this sentence:
Bob and me are going to the store.
If you take out "Bob and", you get
I/Me am going to the store.
Your judgment will clearly tell you that "I" is preferable, so the final product will be
Bob and I are going to the store.

Most people's answers will stop here. I'm now going to give you a little more information on the history of grammar rules like this one.

This rule, like many grammar rules in English, was created in the 1700s. That was the time period of the Age of Enlightenment, when people were analzying the world around them and trying to make it very logical and ordered. The grammarians of the time noticed that there was variation in English, and they thought that was bad. You see, people have been using either "I" or "me" in sentences like the one you've asked about for hundreds of years in English.

The grammarians of the 1700s thought that it was just terrible that people had two possible things that they would say in that situation, and they thought it must be stopped and ordered. They used Latin as a model, because they liked it a lot. Therefore, they made a rule that tried to make English more like Latin (Latin had clear choices of linguistic forms based on grammatical role, as I've mentioned above.)

However, the grammarians' suggestions didn't really ever catch on, because people don't learn how to speak their native languages from grammar books. English speakers just continued doing what they had been doing for the past few hundred years; that is, saying "I" sometimes and saying "me" sometimes. And that has continued to the present day.

The upshot of all this is that basically every native speaker of English will sometimes say "I" in a situation like this and sometimes say "me" in a situation like this. In the few cases that you even notice, you may choose to follow a rule like the one above to make your choice. Or you may choose not to follow the rule, knowing that people will certainly understand you anyway, and that you're only doing what English speakers have been doing for hundreds of years.

(By the way, your choice of pronoun in this situation varies somewhat depending on other factors. I believe that gender is one, for example.)

Answer 3

Here's a simple trick to figure out if it is I or me. If you take the other noun out of the sentence and rearrange the verb a bit, does it make better sense to say I or me?

In your example if you take Bob out you get, "What is happening to I.", which does not make sense. But "What is happening to me." does. So, when you put Bob back in, "What is happening to Bob and me." is correct.

Answer 4

I think 'bob and i' is wrong but only on the basis that it just doesn't sound right to me.
Foreign multi-lingual people always say that english is always the hardest language to master because of all the crazy grammatical rules.
Probably didn't help much but i sure did try.

Answer 5

i really have no idea, but who cares, it was dawson!!! i LOVE dawson, and dawsons creek , its my favorite show, i record it everyday though 4got yesterday, i read the script on the internet and it said something of a nathan, are you talking about yesterdays episode -5-17 highway to hell? thats what was on yesterday, and i really dont no the answer, maybe they were trying to make it sound like something a real person would say if they werent acting, or maybe he just made a mistake, whio knows??? its still the best show ever made in the universe!

Answer 6

Because it wasn`t really happening between Dawson`s mother and Bob, it was happening between Bob and Dawson.

Answer 7

I'm thinking that's not what it was in the script, and it was his way of helping her out without anyone noticing. It is supposed to be Bob and me.

Answer 8

you can determine if youre using I or me correctly in a sentence by taking out the additional subject. For instance, "What is happening between [with] me" makes sense as opposed to "What is happening between [with] I." You can do that with any sentence where you are unsure about the use of I & me.

Answer 9

when you can still say the statement without the other person's name, and it still makes sense, that's the form you use.

for example:
what is happening to me?
what is happening to bob and me?

can i go with you?
can bob and i go with you?

does that help?

Answer 10

I is subjective, me is objective.

Bob and I go to the store (we go we are the subjects, who act).

Give it to me, or Bob (we are the objects, who are acted upon).

You wouldn't say "Give it to I," or, "Me go to the store," would you?

See what I mean?