Should you say “Alex and I” or “I and Alex”? Is it okay to say “My mom and me” at the beginning of a sentence? These are the types of common grammar questions that you will learn the answer to in this lesson about English pronoun order. I review subject and object pronouns, and then go into detail about HOW and WHERE to use them in a sentence. You will learn more than just the basics, as I tell you what is correct, but also tell you what many people actually say. Watch, then test your understanding by doing the quiz! https://www.engvid.com/he-and-i-him-and-me-english-pronoun-rules

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In this lesson:
0:00 Pronoun Order in English: 6 Rules
1:14 Rule 1: Use subject pronouns in the subject position
3:50 Rule 2: Use object pronouns in the object position
6:41 Rule 3: Place the first person at the end
8:53 Rule 4: For singular pronouns, the order is 2nd person, 3rd, 1st
10:26 Rule 5: For plural pronouns, the order is 3rd person, 2nd, 1st
11:46 Rule 6: Proper nouns are usually placed at the end

TRANSCRIPT

Hey. Yeah. Oh, what am I doing later? Oh, well, my wife and I are going to see a movie. Yeah. What about you and Debra? Okay. Yeah. So, I'll see you and her there. Yeah. That's fine. Okay. Yeah. We'll be there. Okay. Thanks. Bye. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'll put that there for now. Oh.

Hey, everyone. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on English pronoun order. So, in this video, I will give you what are considered to be the grammatical rules or grammatical preferences, in some cases, for pronoun order in English. I will give you what is technically correct, but I will also tell you what you will hear in public, in movies, and other areas where pronoun order sometimes is not followed or the rules of subjects and objects are not followed.

So, to begin, the two basics. One of the most common questions I get is, "Should I start a sentence with 'him and I' or 'he and I' or etc.?" And the first rule is for subject pronouns, right? We use subject pronouns in the subject position. So, let's look at the subject pronouns first. The subject pronouns are "I", "you", "he", "she", "we", and "they". So, these are subject pronouns because they do actions, right? So, you always follow a subject pronoun with some kind of action. So, "Darren and I went out for coffee." If you're ever not sure whether you should use "me" or "I" in this position, all you have to do is erase the other person's name and kind of say, "Wait, is it correct to say 'I went out for coffee' or 'me went out for coffee'?" "Oh, yeah. I went out for coffee." So, "Darren and I went out for coffee." "You and he need to talk." Okay?

So, I know you might say, "Ah, but 'you' and 'him' sounds so good in this case. 'You' and 'him' need to talk." Nope, because you would never say, "Him need to talk." You would say, "He needs to talk," for example, or "Him needs to talk." No. So, "You and he need to talk." So, subject position, doing an action. You need to use a subject pronoun.

Now, in casual speech, in everyday speech, people don't always follow this rule. I'm sure that sometimes I might not follow this rule. I try to follow this rule all the time, but sometimes I will say, "Oh, my sister and me went out for breakfast." Right? "My sister and me did something." This is technically, grammatically incorrect, but you might hear it in casual situations. However, if you are writing an essay, if you are writing anything academic, professional, make sure you stick to the actual rules. And rule number one, use subject pronouns in the subject position.

And this makes rule number two very logical as well. Use object pronouns in the object position. So, the object pronouns are "me", "me", "me", "me", "me", "you", "him", "her", "us", "them". Right? So, when they are being acted upon, so objects can be... They can come after prepositions, they can come after verbs, usually they are receiving an action or they are the object of something.

So, for example, "Tim spoke to her and me." Right? "Tim spoke... Who did he speak to? Oh, he spoke to her, he spoke to me." Now, you might think you can say, "Tim spoke to her and I." It sounds nice. It sounds like it's formal, and yeah, that should be proper. This is actually a hypercorrection. Okay? So, this means that it's corrected, and it sounds like it's formal, and it sounds like it's more proper, but it's actually grammatically incorrect to say, "Tim spoke to her and I." It's like, no, you don't say, "Tim spoke to I", you say, "Tim spoke to me." […]