I am or am I

Hi,

- Can you guess how old I am?
- Guess how old I am.
- How old am I?

Only a direct question has the inverted subject-verb order, as in the third sentence given above.

Thanks. So how about when someome says: so am I. That is not direct. Is that the only exception?

Anonymousso am I

I think you're talking about the situations such as this: You're a learner, and so am I. Here 'so am I' is correct, because that's part of the full sentence, which is not a direct question, obviously,"You're a learner, and so am I". Here, it's used in the sense of 'me, too' or 'I am, too'.

Laborious you can say that that's an exception

I don't think of 'so am I' as an exception. In answer to the original question, you wrote Only a direct question has the inverted subject-verb order, as in the third sentence given above. This is correct when talking about questions.

Inversion is possible in other cases, including:

Exclam

LaboriousAnd yes, you can say that that's an exception.

It depends how you conceptualize the whole problem. I would say that there are two lists of situations. One of them lists the cases where subject-verb inversion occurs; the other lists the cases where subject-verb inversion does not occur.

Since the 'normal' case is not to invert, you might say

In some rare cases even English may still observe the old word order common in other Germanic languages. In Swedish, for example, the word order is always inverted if a clause begins with an adverb of place, manner or time. A British pop singer called Cliff Richard has recoded a song called A Girl Like You. The singer can't make up his mind about the word

Cool BreezeThe singer can't make up his mind about the word order and changes the order as he sings the same verse twice: ...

ESL students, cover your eyes and look away. Pretend you didn't hear this. This is "adults-only" material.