20 / matters magazine / summer 2026
I
n response to my call for lan
guage pet peeves, a reader
emailed about the “misuse” of
personal pronouns, as in “Me
and him went to the circus to
day.” Noted the reader, “It’s so simple
if you remove one of the pronouns
and listen to how the revised sen
tence sounds to your ear.” Indeed,
few speakers would say “Me went to
the circus” or “Him went to the cir
cus,” so why are some of us
OK with “me and him”
as a subject in the
same context?
These
exam
ples illustrate the
grammatical con
cept of case, used
in Latin and older
versions of English,
in which the form a noun
takes depends on whether it’s the
subject or object in a sentence.
English
speakers
gradually
stopped using different endings on
nouns centuries ago, but remnants of
case remain on our pronouns, leav
ing us with “I/me,” “she/her,” “he/
him,” “we/us,” “they/them.” As with
Old English noun forms, our pro
noun system remains unstable, cre
ating variability in how speakers use
them. Pronoun instability is most
noticeable with compound subjects,
as in “me and him” in the example
above. Simple subjects “I,” “we,”
and “they,” when used alone, are
less likely to vary. Instead of misuse,
these differences reflect non-random
variation or evidence of a language
system undergoing gradual change.
The reader’s example reminded
me of a social media post I saw ex
pressing “prayers to she and her fam
ily.” Initially, this looks like another
example of exchanging subject and
object pronouns, but in this latter
case the speaker replaces the (expect-
ed?) pronoun “her” with the subject
pronoun “she.” Again, how many
of us would say “prayers to she”?
Instead of defaulting to the more
common (and arguably more natu-
ral-sounding) “her,” the social media
poster here is probably practicing hy-
percorrection, similar to what speak-
ers do when they say, “Thanks for
inviting Andy and I to your party”
when “Andy and me” would
be the preferred form.
(See my column from
the Summer 2025
issue of Matters
Magazine, where I
discuss hypercor-
rection.)
A
related
and
much less contentious
language change is the gradu-
al loss of the pronoun “whom.” Who
among us asks, “Whom did you
call?” or “Whom did you see at the
party?” Some speakers retain “whom”
immediately following a preposition,
as in “To whom should I address the
letter?” And then there are the speak-
ers who hypercorrect here as well, as
in another social media post in which
someone complained that “Whom-
ever seemed to be in charge” wasn’t
doing a great job.
One of my own pronoun pet
peeves is the use of “myself” where
“me” works just fine, as in “Please let
John or myself know your decision.”
On that note, remember to email me
(myself or I) with your own peeves
and questions.
Please share your thoughts on
these and other language matters
with your local linguist at language
matters@mattersmagazine.com.
Kristen di Gennaro is an associate pro-
fessor of English at Pace University,
where she teaches courses in linguistics.
Whom said that?
Me and him want to know.
BY KRISTEN DI GENNARO
languagematters
“It’s
so simple if you
remove one of the
pronouns and listen to
how the revised sentence
sounds to your ear.”
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