Grammar help, please!

[NuclearFairy]

This sounds like the kind of place where one would be liable for a spanking for not following the Temple grammar rules.

Geeze, sounds like the kind of place my grandma would've loved.

 

[XerXesXu]

Especially characters who are narrators.

I'd most emphatically advise against that. If your 1P narrator is an escaped slave form Alabama it would come across as exceptionally odd if she spoke like a high-school teacher from Massachusetts.

 

[XerXesXu]

Not necessarily. It’s actually pretty easy to build creative dialogue with correct grammar.

It may be creative, but it will be unconvincing.

 

[Britva415]

I'd most emphatically advise against that. If your 1P narrator is an escaped slave form Alabama it would come across as exceptionally odd if she spoke like a high-school teacher from Massachusetts.

If.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

It may be creative, but it will be unconvincing.

Not necessarily. Love your absolutes.

 

[Actingup]

Geeze, sounds like the kind of place my grandma would've loved.

Giving or receiving?

 

[NuclearFairy]

Giving or receiving?

Giving. She would whip my uncles behinds whenever she caught them using improper grammar on purpose around us younger kids.

Didn't matter that we were running barefoot through the woods most of the time, we needed to sound respectable when we went to church, so we weren't allowed to sound like hicks at home.

 

[XerXesXu]

Giving or receiving?

The worst you'd get was a hard stare from benchers at the high-table if you started throwing their stale bread rolls at one another. The port on the other hand was well aged and very fine thanks to our predecessors investing the common fund in brothels in the far-east, then using the proceeds to buy port and fine wines.

 

[Actingup]

Giving. She would whip my uncles behinds whenever she caught them using improper grammar on purpose around us younger kids.

Didn't matter that we were running barefoot through the woods most of the time, we needed to sound respectable when we went to church, so we weren't allowed to sound like hicks at home.

The plot bunnies are just leaping around the paddocks here.

 

[TheLobster]

The accusative form, (...)

I'd say locative, but the exact cases in English are a muddy and vestigial topic anyway. Since it only inflects pronouns, and only in the manner of nominative/genitive/everything else, distinctions between different flavors of "everything else" are difficult to nail down exactly.

Anyway, if "close to Sara and me" sounds weird to someone, despite being correct, I'd just flip it around and say "close me and Sara."

 

[stickygirl]

"One of the officers stood by the attacker, and the other stayed close to Sara and me."

"One officer had the attacker in a choke hold so that the hoarse words 'I can't breathe' could be heard. The other three stamped on his hands and used batons to quiet him down. Another officer asked to see Sara's ID and started to ask how long she'd been in the country and where she was born. I wandered away a short distance and was about to film the scene on my iPhone when I was hit with a rubber bullet, sending me to the ground."
It's all about accusative form.

 

[Trionyx]

I believe this whole issue resulted from parents correcting their childrens’ misuse of the word ‘me.’

‘Me and Jimmy want to play ball.’
‘No, Honey, it is Jimmy and I!’

That has become so ingrained that even when ‘me’ is appropriate, as in the original post, many use ‘I’ in its place incorrectly.

I agree that using incorrect grammar when quoting characters might be OK but third person narration should use correct grammar.

 

[onehitwanda]

"One officer had the attacker in a choke hold so that the hoarse words 'I can't breathe' could be heard. The other three stamped on his hands and used batons to quiet him down. Another officer asked to see Sara's ID and started to ask how long she'd been in the country and where she was born. I wandered away a short distance and was about to film the scene on my iPhone when I was hit with a rubber bullet, sending me to the ground."
It's all about accusative form.

There's some dative and ablative going on here too.

sorry

 

[StillStunned]

There's some dative and ablative going on here too.

sorry

One of the best things about finishing school was never having to think about datives and ablatives ever again.

 

[onehitwanda]

One of the best things about finishing school was never having to think about datives and ablatives ever again.

Sic transit Gloria mundi - my sister, Gloria, was sick on the bus.

 

[StillStunned]

Sic transit Gloria mundi - my sister, Gloria, was sick on the bus.

Sic in omnibus!

 

[onehitwanda]

Sic in omnibus!

Fiat in Uno et pulverem.

 

[StillStunned]

Fiat in Uno et pulverem.

Pulverem? I barely knew 'em!

 

[TheLobster]

Everythingum est morus profoundus when spokenem via Latinum.

 

[XerXesXu]

One of the best things about finishing school was never having to think about datives and ablatives ever again.

The only times you went to finishing school was to peek over the wall at the girls then return home nursing your memories for recreational abuse.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I believe this whole issue resulted from parents correcting their childrens’ misuse of the word ‘me.’

‘Me and Jimmy want to play ball.’
‘No, Honey, it is Jimmy and I!’

That has become so ingrained that even when ‘me’ is appropriate, as in the original post, many use ‘I’ in its place incorrectly.

I agree that using incorrect grammar when quoting characters might be OK but third person narration should use correct grammar.

Agreed, but also in the first half of the last century it was deemed correct to use the nominative (I) in comparisons - I have books where characters correct others for saying "She is taller than me" because "it's short for 'she is taller than I am'" so one should say 'taller than I'.

I get the impression it was only still a thing for the upper classes by the 1950s, but it would have added to the idea that 'I' is always right if you're trying to speak proper but haven't internalised the rules.

 

[AG31]

English is not a language inflected for case: 'I' and 'me' are grammatically synonyms. This devolves into a matter of usage - who and when?

It's usually described as the INDIRECT-object, as in 'You (subject) give (verb) it (direct-object) to (preposition) me (indirect-object).

What does it mean "inflected for case?" "I" is nominative and "me" is objective/accusative. They're certainly not grammatically synonyms.

I couldn't recall the distinction between objective and accusative, so here's Google's AI opinion. I didn't bother to dig further. It could be lying.
n English grammar, objective case and accusative case generally refer to the same thing: the form of a noun or pronoun that functions as the direct object of a verb or the object of a preposition. While "accusative" is less common in modern English, it's the term used in some other languages and in older grammatical descriptions. In short, when a pronoun receives the action of a verb (like "him" in "I saw him"), it's in the objective (or accusative) case.

 

[TheLobster]

What does it mean "inflected for case?" "I" is nominative and "me" is objective/accusative. They're certainly not grammatically synonyms.

Inflection by case is the change of word's form based on grammatical case; it's more concisely called declension.

There's not much of it left in modern English, and it's most obvious with pronouns, as you have illustrated with "I" and "me". "Mine" is the third case here, called genitive or possessive, which also happens to be only other case for nouns (Saxon genitive, i.e. affixing 's, like "John's car").

There is no separate accusative/dative/etc. case for nouns; its function is realized through word order and/or prepositions. This is probably why some say English is not a language that's inflected by case, since it's generally true with only small asterisks.

 

[stickygirl]

I believe this whole issue resulted from parents correcting their childrens’ misuse of the word ‘me.’

‘Me and Jimmy want to play ball.’
‘No, Honey, it is Jimmy and I!’

That has become so ingrained that even when ‘me’ is appropriate, as in the original post, many use ‘I’ in its place incorrectly.

I agree that using incorrect grammar when quoting characters might be OK but third person narration should use correct grammar.

That would have earned a slap at home -
'Jimmy and I would like to play ball, please.' because I want doesn't get.

I'm off to look up Wanda's ablatives

Also
Bellus Bella Bellum
Belli Bllae Belli
Bello Bellae Bello
Bellum Bellam Bellum
Belle Bella Bellum
Bello Bella Bello ...

The classics were fucking wasted on I.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

That would have earned a slap at home -
'Jimmy and I would like to play ball, please.' because I want doesn't get.

I'm off to look up Wanda's ablatives

Also
Bellus Bella Bellum
Belli Bllae Belli
Bello Bellae Bello
Bellum Bellam Bellum
Belle Bella Bellum
Bello Bella Bello ...

The classics were fucking wasted on I.

Latin's a dead language,
As dead as dead can be;
It killed off all the Romans,
And now it's killing me!

I got through two years of school Latin. The highlight was Caecilius snuffing it when Pompeii erupted, promptly followed by epic disappointment that his annoying son Quintus and slave Clemens had magically survived and decided to travel on to Roman Britain, to be even more annoying there. When they survived various woes to reach Egypt, that was time to quit.

At least German only has three cases and barely uses one of them any more. (Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod...)