Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
Seeing a lot of (technically grammatically incorrect!) phrasings like "between you and I", "for Sam and I" lately. One way to interpret: this is yet another way English-language culture is forgetting that it ever had anything to do with Latin. Same idea as https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1479817912106074119
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
Expanding a bit: "traditionally", pronouns in English have two main cases (excluding possessive forms): nominative and accusative. Nominative is for the subject: *I* said that..., *He* built... Accusative is for the object: I saw *him*, He saw *me* And for pronouns: Bob came with *me*, Charlie greeted *her*...
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
This came from Latin, which had a much more complex and expansive system, which covered not just pronouns but also nouns. English dropped this for nouns, but kept it for pronouns.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
It's correct to say "Bob and I went to the store", instead of "Bob and me went to the store", because "Bob and I" is the subject - the thing performing the action. it's (traditionally) correct to say "Sam saw Bob and me", and not "Sam saw Bob and I", because "Bob and me" is the object - the thing being seen.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
But it seems like English speakers are not really instinctively capable of wrapping their head around the distinction, and I suspect it's the extreme unevenness of the case system in English, plus the fading influence of Latin (which teaches people that case systems are just and natural) that's causing this.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
(Clarification, thanks @bbjubjub.eth): this stuff comes to English from the Indo-European family in general, not necessarily *through* Latin (which is only one branch). I'd say Latin's influence in the last few centuries is primarily intellectual - though rapidly fading now.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
This all makes me wonder if people will start bungling "I" vs "me" at some point in the next few decades. It feels like English can "survive" people screwing up the distinction much more easily than German or any other language that depends on it. Would be interesting to see that happen!
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artlu is on lunchbreak
@artlu
how people speak in Singapore may be an early indicator of the future of English grammar
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