[afraidfortherepublic]

Since you teach English, perhaps you will answer some questions that have been bothering me for the last few years.

Whatever happened to the use of the word “whom”? I never hear, or read, it any more.

What about the subjunctive after a phrase starting with “if”, as in “If I were...”? People now seem to all be saying “If I was...” (grates on the ears.)

Why do so many people (especially those Ivy League-educated news readers on TV) get away with saying “me and him” instead of “he and I” and other such offenses? Or, “John gave it to Brian and I” instead of “John gave it to Brian and me”?

Once English forms pass out of common usage, are they passe? I won’t even touch the mis-use of the apostrophe, my personal crusade.

And then there is “my bad”. Really!

[afraidfortherepublic]

Whatever happened to the use of the word “whom”? I never hear, or read, it any more.

Geeesh! I have an error in that statement! It should read: Whatever happened to the use of the word “whom”? I never hear, nor read, it any more. And, that brings to mind another question. Whatever happened to the word "nor"?

[James C. Bennett]

Since you teach English, perhaps you will answer some questions that have been bothering me for the last few years.

Whatever happened to the use of the word “whom”? I never hear, or read, it any more.

What about the subjunctive after a phrase starting with “if”, as in “If I were...”? People now seem to all be saying “If I was...” (grates on the ears.)

Why do so many people (especially those Ivy League-educated news readers on TV) get away with saying “me and him” instead of “he and I” and other such offenses? Or, “John gave it to Brian and I” instead of “John gave it to Brian and me”?

Once English forms pass out of common usage, are they passe? I won’t even touch the mis-use of the apostrophe, my personal crusade.

And then there is “my bad”. Really!

It all started going to the dogs when we became infatuated by newfangled ideas and drifted away from speaking like this:

[untenured]

Actually, I teach economics, not English. :)

I look at it from the perspective of language being a tool to help us convey information. It needs rules, like any standard. But it also must be flexible enough to allow the expression of as many ideas as possible. (Think about Orwell's Newspeak as the opposite of this.)

I don't actually see any fundamental harm if someone says "He yelled at Brian and I," although that does break the rules as you and I understand them, and I certainly would not say it myself and would mark it on a student paper. I think what is happening in your examples is that linguistic competition is stripping out that which is unneeded. Eventually, people may use objective and subjective pronouns interchangeably without anyone caring. But at any moment in history an individual using the King's English lets other people know that he is serious about communicating effectively, so it is important.

But there is always linguistic change. No one says "thou" and "thee" any more. Few know the meaning of the adjective "ruth" anymore, even though it is obvious once we see "ruthless." OTOH, "Google" as a verb is now growing in usage. So as I said change per se doesn't bother me. What bothers me is people whose English is so incompetent that they can't communicate what they wish to communicate. They are the people who most need to get drilled in the rules.

BTW, for language nerds, a really cool new tool is Google Ngrams, which allows the user to trace changes over time in the use of any phrase in books that Google has scanned. For example, you can enter "if i was going," which most of the time is probably a misuse of the subjunctive. This phrase has been getting more popular since the early 1960s, which I think will accord with the belief of many Freepers that this was when civilization began to come apart. :)

[Still Thinking]

Why do so many people (especially those Ivy League-educated news readers on TV) get away with saying “me and him” instead of “he and I” and other such offenses? Or, “John gave it to Brian and I” instead of “John gave it to Brian and me”?

One of my pet peeves, especially since it's hard to see why it's hard. People who would never say "John gave it to I" are suddenly at a total loss when faced with a compound subject or object. Seriously?

[Fiji Hill]

Once English forms pass out of common usage, are they passe? I won’t even touch the mis-use of the apostrophe, my personal crusade.

My personal crusade is to restore the use of "he," "him" and "his" as the singular indeterminate pronoun rather than "they," "them" and "their." "From each according to their ability to each according to their needs" may sound like a politically correct rendition of the Karl Marx quote, but it grates on my ears.