Confuse personal pronouns

Question

I have read many grammar books regarding about this, and is still confuse about it. can you kindly assist me for the following:

Who did it ? answer given by the grammar book is Not I , (how come) is Not me?.

It is I telling you to go out (this i can understand why they use i instead of me) but following one i don't understand:
It's them i spoke to (Not they) -how come (above is it is i , why this one cannot use they)
since if we take away the it's (it make no sense if we say them i spoke to ) do u agree with me.

Let you and me go out (Not i) (i always thought it is supposed to be i because i read a book saying we must follow the subject ) if the subject is you then use i .
How come another eg is :
Let her and him do the work (Not she and he) ?.

All the above answer i got it from a grammar book written by Milon Nandy.

*** clause,

if i were a millionaire, i would buy u a car, (how come I were instead of i was)
if he were a millionaire, he would buy a car (how come he were instead of he was)

thank you very much for your kind assistance.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Hi Happy,

This area is a very contentious one, so it is not surprising that you find different pronouncements within and between grammar books. Here is my opinion on the examples you present:

(1) 'Who did it ?' Not I.'

The pronoun stands in parallel to the subject 'who', and is a shortened form of 'I didn't do it.' As such, it is formally correct, but 'Not me' is common and acceptable in spoken English.

(2) 'It is I telling you to go out.'
'It is them I spoke to.'

In the first of these two sentences, 'I' again stands in subject apposition to 'who'-- '(who is) telling'-- while in the second sentence 'them' stands in object apposition to 'whom'-- '(whom) I spoke to' ['I spoke to them']. In informal English, however, 'It's me telling you to go out' is common and acceptable.

(3) 'Let you and me go out.'
'Let her and him do the work.'

Both of these sentences are imperative, with the understood subject 'you', so that, (ungrammatically) extended, they would read:

'(You) let you and me go out.'
'(You) let her and him do the work.'

Now it is obvious that 'you, me, her and him' are objects of the main verb. Having said that, as you will see from the additional references I quote below, 'you and I' has become so common a collocation that it is becoming acceptable in any position: 'Let's you and I have a picnic'-- in spite of the fact that 'let's' is the contraction for 'let us', which is clearly and rigidly petrified in the objective case.

(4) 'If I were a millionaire, I would buy you a car.'
'If he were a millionaire, he would buy a car.'

Both are conditional and formally take the subjunctive form 'were' in all persons; that is simply the nature of English-- one of the uses of the subjunctive mood is to express hypothetical situations. Again, however, 'if I was' is becoming increasingly acceptable in spoken English. Another sign of the slow death of the distinct subjunctive forms in the language.

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Some additional references:

(1) From the Columbia Guide to Standard American English:

"Most speakers of English tend to put nominative case pronouns at the left-hand side of the clause, in “subjective” territory before the verb, and objective case pronouns at the right-hand side of the clause, in “objective” territory after it. Apparently the pressure of this habit is so great that it overwhelms the Standard Formal pattern for the special class of verbs called linking or copulative verbs, wherein It is she is required, at least by rule, rather than It’s her, or where This is he is needed, not This is him. The primary use of the objective case pronoun after linking verbs is in the first person: It’s us, It’s me. With third person, singular and plural, many Standard speakers will retain the nominative, even at lower levels of speech and in Informal uses. (And of course with second person you, the nominative and objective are indistinguishable.) But It’s me and It’s us are both Standard in all Conversational and most Informal uses, perhaps in part because they occur almost exclusively in speech anyway. Consider the way you answer the phone if the caller asks for you. To a stranger you’ll respond (if you’re a Standard speaker), This is she [he], not This is me, or you’ll dodge the issue entirely and say Speaking. If you know the caller well, though, It’s me will serve. In Oratorical speech and Formal writing, however, Standard English demands the nominative: It is we who must shoulder the burden. It is us just won’t do in that sort of context."

(2) Observations 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). In consequence of the latter consideration, it is usual in informal style to find objective forms selected in such instances as the following:

His sister is taller than him.
It wasn't me.

Many people are uncomfortable about such forms, however, especially in writing, though the subject variants are almost equally objectionable in seeming unnatural. Where an operator can be added, of course, the problem of choice satisfactorily disappears:

His sister is taller than he is.

Note: In contrast with 'except', which is always treated as a preposition and therefore followed by the objective case ('Nobody except her objected.'), there is vacillation over prepositional 'but', many people preferring the subjective form if it is in subject 'territory'. Thus:

Nobody but she objected.

Even in object territory, 'but' can be followed by either form, as with 'as' and 'than':

Nobody objected but she/her.

The frequency of the coordination 'you and I' seems to have resulted in a tendency to make it case-invariant, though such examples as the following are felt to be uneasily hypercorrect:

Let's you and I go together then."

Casi · Answer

In addition to Mister Micawber's seasoned and excellent advice, here are a couple of quick tips and cool tricks:

When you're not sure which pronoun to use there are two things you can do.

1) Replace the pronoun with a word that makes sense to you, like this,

Question: Who did it? => I did it? She did it? He did it? They did? and so on.

2) Change the sentence around so that it makes sense to you, like this,

Statment: It's them I spoke to => I spoke to them.

By the way, "Let's" is a contraction of "Let us". The pronoun 'us' is only compatible with the pronouns me, her, him, them, it, and you.

Whenever you see "If...were" remind yourself that it's not the past tense of the verb BE. It's a completely different verb. It expresses, "but I am not", like this,

If I were you (but I am not you) I would go to London and study.
If I were rich (but I am not rich) I would buy a car.
If he were single (but he is not single) she would marry him.

The verb 'were' is regular for all persons and numbers. That is,

If I were
If you were
If s/he were
If it were
If they were
If we were

Happy · Answer

thank you so much for your kind assistance and your patience for explaining everything to me in such a details.I GET A CLEARER PICTURE NOW.

Happy · Answer

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR KIND AND WONDERFUL ADVICE , IT REALLY HELP ME ALOT.

MrPedantic · Answer

In that case, what are we to say to J. Alfred Prufrock:

'Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table...'

MrP

Mister Micawber · Answer

We say to Mr. Eliot, 'you have poetic license, sir, to use language to create your moods and characters':

'. . . Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress. . .
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse. . .'

Is not J. Alfred the type of white-flannel trousered gentleman who would say 'Let us go then, you and I'?

Casi · Answer

Poetic license, naw. It's just not Modern English that's all. 'you and I' functions as a restatement:

Let us go then, you and I [shall go],

PoorRichard · Answer

I would say that this was part of Eliot's satire.

It's not the only solecism Prufrock commits.

Confuse personal pronouns

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