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I was talking to an american friend who is a Spanish teacher (I used to be an English teacher). At a certain point she said something and my answer was

"We all teachers do the same",

then, she replied "I'd say ... all us teachers do the same",

but right after that, she also said she was not completely sure if her sentence was grammatically right. What do you think? Do both sentences, hers and mine, work?

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    'All of us teachers' would be the most correct, including 'of' as a preposition. 'All us teachers' would work, but it's more of a short-form that's not completely correct.
    – mcraenich
    Nov 6, 2018 at 19:10
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    And what about "We teachers all do the same"?
    – RubioRic
    Nov 6, 2018 at 19:53
  • Following the link you can find a similar question in our sister site english.stackexchange.com/questions/56089/…
    – RubioRic
    Nov 6, 2018 at 19:57

1 Answer 1

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"We all teachers" is certainly not grammatical English. "All us teachers" is acceptable, though analysing why is tricky.

You can form a noun phrase from a pronoun+noun placed in apposition:

We teachers are strong.
He gave us teachers a pay rise
Us teachers want more! (*)

The meaning in each case is "us, who are teachers". A normal apposition The last example is doubtful, because "Us" appears in the subject, but examples similar to this in considered speech of native speakers do exist.

The word "all" functions as a determiner, and it should not be placed in the middle of the apposition. So "We all teachers" is not correct, but "All we teachers" might be ok.

All can also be a (pro)noun, and you can form a noun phrase "All of us teachers". The subject is "All", "of us teachers" has "us teachers" not in the subject position, and so "us" is used in preference to "we".

"All us teachers" can be parsed either as a reduction of "All of us teachers" or as a modification of "All we teachers" (with us used as the pronoun is not a major part of the subject).

If I was speaking I'd prefer "All of us teachers..."

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