密歇根新闻广播 Me和I到底怎么区分

Sometimes people send us questions that we avoid trying to answer. We don't do this to be mean.

The problem is, some questions we get have answers that are too long and complicated to explain within the confines of this segment.

This week though, we're throwing caution to the wind. We're finally going to tackle "between you and I."

The first thing to know about "between you and I" is that it's not new. A lot of people think it's new and are blaming today's young people for using it, but we've got examples of people using "between you and I" that go back to Middle English, including Chaucer.

In 1767, a writer named Archibald Campbell used "between you and I" in the first edition of a book and was subsequently corrected. In the next edition, Campbell included the correction and then wrote, "Though it must be confessed to be ungrammatical, it is yet almost universally used in familiar conversation."

See? Even as far back as 1767, someone was saying, "but everybody says it."

What's happening with "between you and I" is part of a bigger shift in the language. One thousand years ago, all nouns in English used to differentiate¹ between subject and object. That distinction has completely disappeared except when it comes to pronouns. We still make a subject/object distinction with "he/him," "she/her," "we/us," and "they/them."

Did you notice that "you" is missing from that list? We used to have "ye" for subject and "you" for object, but that subject/object distinction has collapsed². Remember that. It collapsed, and we managed to survive.

There isn't much confusion when these pronouns appear by themselves. The confusion comes when they're lumped into conjoined constructions with "and."

It may be that (something) and I" is becoming a routinized or fixed³ phrase. If it's in subject position, you say, "My mother and I went to the store." If it's in object form, you still say, She gave the present to my mother and I."

Some people might say that's wrong, because if you say, "to my mother and I," "mother and I" is the object of the preposition, "to." Therefore, they’d say, it should be "to my mother and me."

However, there are linguists⁴ who say there's no reason all the parts of this conjoined expression, "my mother and I," have to be an object. It could just be a fixed phrase, and the whole phrase is the object of the preposition.

"Between you and I" is all over the place. You'll find it in the university, you'll hear it on NPR, you'll hear politicians using it, etc. A lot of very educated people are using it. The question is, how many people have to use between you and I before it's considered educated usage?

1 differentiate   

vi.(between)区分；vt.区别；使不同

参考例句：

• You can differentiate between the houses by the shape of their chimneys.你可以凭借烟囱形状的不同来区分这两幢房子。
• He never learned to differentiate between good and evil.他从未学会分辨善恶。

2 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

3 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

4 linguists   

n.通晓数国语言的人( linguist的名词复数 )；语言学家

参考例句：

• The linguists went to study tribal languages in the field. 语言学家们去实地研究部落语言了。 来自辞典例句
• The linguists' main interest has been to analyze and describe languages. 语言学家的主要兴趣一直在于分析并描述语言。 来自辞典例句