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jpvanderwerf2001
Joined: 02 Oct 2003
Posts: 1117
Location: New York
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 Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:06 am Post subject: From the "geez I'd never really thought of that" f |
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My (Russian) colleague just asked me which of the following is correct:
A) If I were her, I would...
or
B) If I were she, I would...
I immediately answered that option "A" is correct. However, then I started to think about it, and concluded that "B" would surely be more grammatically correct. That being said, I'm absolutely positive that I've used "A" my whole life.
I did some cursory research on the Web and it appears that my second-guessing was spot on: We should say "If I were she..." But, man, does that sound--I dunno, awkward.
I told my colleague that both are acceptable, and she should tell her students so. I hope that wasn't a big no-no 
Can anyone weigh in here? (And is this an American/British English thing?) |
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jpvanderwerf2001
Joined: 02 Oct 2003
Posts: 1117
Location: New York
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:13 am Post subject: |
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| By the way, the rest of my Post Title was supposed to be "file" (not 'f'); got cut off, I guess... |
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johntpartee
Joined: 02 Mar 2010
Posts: 3258
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:53 am Post subject: |
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| Yeah, "she" is grammatically correct, BUT it sounds odd. This is something I've been harping on about nitpicking our beloved mother tongue to death with these "rules". The "rules" of English are not rules, they are GUIDELINES. Very seldom can it be said that something is ALWAYS a certain way in English; almost invariably there are exceptions. I go with the SOUND of the language, and I don't like the sound of "If I were she", therefore I probably wouldn't say it. It sounds like an affectation. |
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GambateBingBangBOOM
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 2021
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:04 am Post subject: |
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Added to that is that "if I were [her]" is often "if I was [her]" in many varieties of English.
"If I were she" formal to the point of sounding almost archaic
"If I were her" perfectly fine, but slowly being replaced by
"If I was her" (probably) especially in North American spoken English. |
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fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:24 am Post subject: |
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I Googled "if I were they" and the second item in the results ( http://www.beaugrande.com/Ifiwereyou.htm ) contained the following (scroll down to just past halfway down the page, until you reach the '4. PRACTICAL CORPUS WORK FOR TEACHERS' section, then look at the fifth paragraph there):
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The Bank of English returned 2061 lines for 'if I were' and 2876 for 'if I was'; at least both usages are truly alive and well. For purely practical reasons, I decided to start with examining and classifying roughly 10% of these.(6) During this work, I noticed that 'if I were you' appeared in 20 lines, and 'if I was you' in only three lines, whilst other usages with Pronouns after 'were' or 'was' were quite rare. To check these proportions, I requested all lines from the Bank of English where 'if I were' and 'if I was' were followed by any of the Pronouns 'you, he/him, she/her, they/them'. This time I got back 402 lines, and sure enough the frequencies across the entire corpus were drastically uneven. No less than 282 lines attested 'if I were you', whereas 'if I was you' trailed at 37. The rest, those having Third Person Pronouns, were at best marginal, some hovering between 10 and 20 and some close to or equal to zero. After eliminating a few false alarms (7) (e.g. 'if I was her dog'), I got these totals:
if I was he 0 if I was she 2 if I was they 0
if I was him 17 if I was her 5 if I was them 11
if I were he 3 if I were she 0 if I were they 1
if I were him 18 if I were her 6 if I were them 10
These figures indicate that a usage commonly recommended for 'standard English' in EFL textbooks � 'if I were' + Subject Pronoun � is no longer secured in authentic English. The old Subjunctive 'were' is surviving much better than the presumably standard Subject Pronoun after it, and was found to colligate with the Object Pronoun roughly as often as did the Indicative 'was'. |
(My use of bold).
I suppose you could make things more distinct for students by more or less explicitly contrasting the above sorts of sentences with ones like If/when(ever) I was unsure or vacillating, S: they (would) set me straight by Googling some facts; or perhaps better yet, with ones that use verbs other than 'be': If/when(ever) I doubt(ed) [O: them (*they)], they (will/would) set me straight by Googling some facts. (Just to make things absolutely explicit, note how two 'they's' in a row would be unacceptable in my second example, in that the first 'they' would be the incorrect [asterisked] form for what should be the accusative/true Object form 'them'; but the second 'they' would obviously be fine in itself, being the correct form for the new Subject 'they'). |
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the_thinker
Joined: 24 Nov 2009
Posts: 68
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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The point here is that we have the pattern be + personal pronoun.
In English in this case we use the accusative form of the pronoun, much as we do in phrases like:
Me and my friends went to the cinema.
Or:
A: Who wants a coffee?
B: Me!
In all these cases the pronoun is being used emphatically in some way, and that is reflected grammatically by using the accusative form.
But ...
There are self-appointed purists that would say that in all these cases the accusative form is being misused, by analogy to to other languages that don't use accusative forms in this way. What they don't realise is that just because accusative forms are used as objects, it doesn't mean they can't be used in other ways too, such as those above.
What we seem to lack is any terminology to describe the phenomenon, and that makes it easier for people to start saying it's grammatically incorrect to use the accusative form after a copular verb like be. |
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johnslat
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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Dear the_thinker,
"There are self-appointed purists that would say that in all these cases the accusative form is being misused, . . "
"Me and my friends went to the cinema." Yikes 
Such as (ahem) me - I object to an object's being used as a subject. But I'm an appointed (and anointed) purist.
Regards,
Pure John |
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the_thinker
Joined: 24 Nov 2009
Posts: 68
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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| OK, so are you saying that you would never answer the question 'Who wants a coffee?' with the word 'me'? And that it's unacceptable to do so? If not, then you're already accepting that accusative forms are sometimes used as subjects. |
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zandos
Joined: 11 Aug 2010
Posts: 15
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:01 pm Post subject: |
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It must be a Welsh thing, but most people here in Wales, including teachers would say - If I was you.
Now, I know that is incorrect, but different area's do have different ways of saying things, but everyone know's what is being said so would it make a difference? |
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