- Me and him did it.
- I and he did it.
Are both acceptable, If yes, how?
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2 Answers
The second of these is grammatically correct. The first is not.
In the second, "He and I ..." is more common than "I and he ...".
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I came to now the 1st sentence has some sense, not completely ungrammatical, Is this correct?– SamAug 16 at 15:16
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4The first sentence absolutely makes sense, but unfortunately a couple of centuries ago people writing grammar books made up some rules that made it "wrong". Since then, generation after generation of British children (I don't know about other varieties of English) have been saying it quite naturally, only to have parents and teachers insisting that they're not allowed to speak their own language, but must use a made-up language in which only Sentence 2 is allowed. Aug 16 at 15:26
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1@ColinFine is correct: everyone will understand the first sentence. It makes perfect sense. It will sound "wrong" to some people. Aug 16 at 15:37
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It is clearly wrong to use the object case for the subject(s) of a sentence, but some people do this in casual speech and the meaning is obvious. Aug 16 at 19:02
The rule to remember for a sentence with two or more subjects is this: if you remove all but one of the subjects, it should still agree.
All of these are correct:
"He did it"
"I did it"
"He and I did it"
"He, Carol, and I did it"
"He and me did it" is wrong, because "me did it" is also wrong. "Me" is the object of a sentence, not the subject.
Likewise, if there are multiple objects, each one should make sense in the sentence by its own. All of these are correct:
"It happened to him"
"It happened to me"
"It happened to him and me"
Secondly, "I and he" is much less common than "he and I". This is usually explained as a matter of being polite and not grammar (you are politely putting the other party first in the sentence), but it's universal to the extent it might as well be a grammar rule.
