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I struggle with the usage of I/me and he/him in the following sentences. Which one is correct?

  1. "Did you see how well we managed our holidays me and John?"
  2. "Did you see how well we managed our holidays John and me?"
  3. "Did you see how well John and I managed our holidays?"

I found this explanation: https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/Should-I-use-you-and-me-or-you-and-I but I'm not sure that "me and John", "John and me" or "John and I" is the subject of the sentence or not.

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  • I am assuming from your name and avatar that you are a francophone. Colloquial French uses "dislocation" quite frequently, where a pronoun is used as a subject, but then the full noun is added at the beginning or end of the sentence: "Il m'a apelé, mon frère." You've done this dislocation in sentences 1 and 2, but this construction is very rare in English and should almost always be avoided.
    – Canadian Yankee
    Commented Jul 18 at 12:27
  • Yes, I'm francophone. Those 3 sentences were written by 3 different french-speaking persons. The 1st person wrote the 1st sentence, which was corrected by person #2. Person #3, thinking neither of those sentences was correct, wrote his own version he thought was good English. 1st and 3rd person are stubborn (2nd person doesn't care), both think their sentence is correct, hence this question.
    – Mathieu
    Commented Jul 22 at 6:16

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(3) is the only correct one. You wouldn't say "Did you see how well me managed my holiday?", would you? John and I is the subject of the verb managed.

The incorrect usage "Me and John went..." is frequently heard in informal speech nowadays. However, a speaker using (1) or (2) would pause before me and John/John and me because it's like an afterthought explaining who we refers to. In writing, you would put a comma there.

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An easy way to figure out is to say the sentence for each of the two separately.

Did you see how well he managed this?

Did you see how well I managed this?

Now just merge them together:

Did you see how well he and I managed this?

Same word, same position in the sentence.

Similarly:

Eve said hello to him.

Eve said hello to me.

Together:

Eve said hello to him and me.

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We're trying to figure out the correct pronoun, "me" or "I". Just work from there. Which verb are "me" and "I" most directly involved with? Which verb is closest? Who's doing that verb? The subject (I) is the person or thing doing the action (the verb). The object (me) is the person or thing receiving the action (the verb). If you can figure out the subject of a sentence, the phrase "I am the subject" helps to remember which pronoun to use.

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There is a prescriptive school of thought according to which things like John and me are hungry ought not be used. It is based on the logic that me is for objects and in that sentence one ought to use the subject form of the pronoun, which is (of course) I.

That logic is perfectly valid (and for whatever it’s worth, I myself almost always do form compounds according to the logic). But its validity doesn’t guarantee its “legal force.” Consider, for instance, that French civilization isn’t utterly collapsed despite the fact that their analogous construct, *Jean et je, would never ever be accepted. French permits only Jean et moi, even as the subject of a verb: Jean et moi, nous avons faim. Now sure, French isn’t English; I give this example merely to illustrate that strict, formal logic is not an absolute requirement for any natural language.

Using things like John and me regardless of syntactic context has a very long pedigree and very widespread use.

So whether to use it depends on context. If in a formal register, then selecting one’s pronouns to accord with their syntactic surroundings is advisable. But in more laid-back contexts, the so-called prohibition of John and me are… can be taken with a grain of salt.

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