I or Me? Depends on the We…

One of the resounding memories I have from childhood is when teachers and other people would correct a child on their use of ‘me’ instead of ‘I’.

Usually these people were well meaning parents — though not my own, because coming from a migrant background they would never pick up anyone on their grammar — wanting their children or their children’s friends to speak ‘correctly’. For a while there I think a lot of kids thought ‘me’ was a bad word and that you needed to use ‘I’ in every instance of talking about yourself.

It was not until I was teaching grammar to high-school students, years after my own school experiences, that I realised (with all the delight that comes from learning that big bad adults can be wrong) that, in fact, some of these people had corrected the kids out of habit rather than a thorough understanding of the workings of the English language.

Determining whether to use ‘I’ or ‘me’ is actually a rather straight forward process and, once you get the hang of it, it can become second nature to make the ‘right’ choice quickly and easily.

The question to ask yourself, to figure out whether to choose ‘I’ or ‘me’, is perhaps rather oddly, What happens if I take away ‘we’?

Let’s look at the following example:

Malcolm and me ate chips.

If you take away Malcolm (the other person that makes it ‘we’) then the sentence becomes ‘me ate chips’.

Straight away you see that’s wrong and you know this is a case where you have to use I.

Malcolm and I ate chips. Remove Malcolm. I ate chips.

Another example.

The wombat chased JB and I.

If you take away JB you are left with ‘the wombat chased I’.

Nope. That’s not ok. So here you have to use me.

The wombat chased JB and me. The wombat chased me.

What about a question?

Are those chocolates for Willem and I? Remove Willem and you get, ‘Are those chocolates for I?’

Once again, it’s easy to see that I needs to be me instead.

Are those chocolates for Willem and me/me and Willem? Are those chocolates for me?

Hopefully it’s making sense now so I’ll just leave you with one last example.

Me and Jude found a dog.

Remove dear Jude and what’s left is just you. Me found a dog.

No, no, no.

Jude and I found a dog. I found a dog.

Maybe it’s just me (I did always hate being told I was wrong) but I’d love to go back to some of those ‘well intentioned’ older folk from my youth and show them this quick trick in the hope that it would spare a few young people from receiving an incorrect grammar lesson each time they tried to tell a story.

Now if you’ll excuse me…