We’ve all heard it: We’ve all heard people say “Him and me went…”.

We’ve heard people say “Her and me went…” and we’ve heard people say “Me and him went…”.

But are these correct English? Is this something you want to learn and repeat?

The truth is that it is painful to hear English spoken this way.

We’re going to break these apart into several lessons.

  • The pronouns “him” and “her” are object pronouns. They are the pronouns to use when the speaker (or writer) is referring to the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition.

The problem is when people – commonly – use these pronouns when they are referring to the subject(s) of a sentence.

  • The subject pronouns are I, you, her, him, it, we, they. So it would be proper to say “He and I went to a baseball game. ” It would be proper to say “She and I went to a baseball game.”

It would be proper to say “Mark invited him and me to the baseball game” and it would be proper to say “Mark invited her and me to the baseball game.”  (Using the plural object pronoun, it would be proper, in these cases, to say “Mark invited us to the baseball game.”)

TRY IT #1: So let’s say English grammar isn’t your cup of tea and you don’t really understand object pronouns. So let’s take the sentence “Mark invited her and me to the baseball game” and let’s play around with it. Let’s begin, “Mark sent an email to…….” and fill in the blank.

Your choices are (choose two):

1) him and me
2) he and I
3) her and me
4) she and I

A substitution like we just did above will help you to understand when to use an object pronoun.

The correct choices are 1)  him and me, and 3) her and me.
Rationalle:  We need an OBJECT PRONOUN to complete the preposition “to”.

TRY IT #2: Let’s begin, “……  sent an invitation to Mark.” and fill in the blank.

Your choices are (choose two):

1) She and I
2) Him and me
3) Her and me
4) He and I

The correct choices are 1)  She and I, and 4) He and I.
Rationalle:  We need  SUBJECT PRONOUNS  to indicate who is doing the action.

Next week you and I will discuss “me and her” or “me and him”.

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