You, Me & I

[lsanderson]

Isn't "between you and I/me" a holdover from when English had dual between singular and plural? At some point the latanistas decided it had to be "me" because that fit the rails of their grammar bed.

Comments

[rvrjoe775.livejournal.com]

IIRC it's just a matter of objective/nominative case. As the object of a preposition, 'me' is correct. It still irks me a little when people mess this up but it's become very common, and I suspect this rule will go the way of split infinitives (THAT one was definitely the latinistas).

But...

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

For centuries, it was perfectly acceptable to use either “I” or “me” as the object of a verb or preposition, especially after “and.” Literature is full of examples. Here’s Shakespeare, in “The Merchant of Venice”: “All debts are cleared between you and I.” And here’s Lord Byron, complaining to his half-sister about the English town of Southwell, “which, between you and I, I wish was swallowed up by an earthquake, provided my eloquent mother was not in it.”
It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that language mavens began kvetching about “I” and “me.” The first kvetch cited in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage came from a commencement address in 1846. In 1869, Richard Meade Bache included it in his book “Vulgarisms and Other Errors of Speech.”
Why did these 19th-century wordies insist “I” is “I” and “me” is “me”? They were probably influenced by Latin, with its rigid treatment of subject and object pronouns. For whatever reason, their approach stuck — at least in the rule books.

The I’s Have It
By PATRICIA T. O’CONNER and STEWART KELLERMAN
Published: February 23, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/opinion/24oconner.html

Re: But...

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I think the ONLY place it has ever been acceptable--"acceptable" meaning "used by literate, educated folks" and not "grammatically consistent"--is in compounds. I don't think it was ever acceptable to say, "Give it to she" or "Give it to I."