About Me, Myself and I

Thanks to Kenyan English we now accept constructions like “Me I am going….” The fact that this kind of a construction may go unnoticed doesn’t mean that it is correct. However much an error is repeated, it can never become right unlike that lie which becomes truth once repeated so often. What’s even more nettling is seeing this mistake appear on documents created using word processor programs, grammar checkers are there to help to get rid of these mistakes but some people just ignore! Smart devices dumb users, right? (Topic for another page) anyhow, let us try and differentiate these personal pronouns.

Me

Only use me when you are the object in the sentence. It is used along with other objective pronouns like her, us, him etc.

E.g. the old man called john, the old man called him

Thus is such a case if we replace the personal pronoun him with first person singular it will be; the old man called me!

Easy, right?

Me is also used to refer to the person being referred to by a preposition. For example:

·         This article has been written by me.

·         Rose was accompanied by Beth and myself me.

Love yourself, not you!

Myself

Now that I mentioned in an instance where it is misused, why don’t we just have a look at how it is used before we go to I? Myself is a reflexive pronoun meaning it is used as an object that refers to the speaker who is also the subject, thus we can say it is the reflexive form of I.

·         E.g. I love me myself

·         I like being me myself

However we have developed this bad habit of using me instead of myself especially on social media, trust me I might be heading for an “un-follow expedition’’ for anyone using that after I have shared it.(Bah, Kabutha is just a single follower anyway, well to me you’re committing crimes against grammar J). Back to the track, use of myself is not limited to I, it is also used for referring to oneself after being mentioned in the same sentence.

·         E.g. you don’t expect me to tell you about myself.

Finally it is used to put emphasis that for instance someone did something without assistance.

·         E.g. I myself witnessed all the drama

·         I did all the work by myself. By+oneself=alone

The former may sound incorrect but it is correct, I bet the clarification in the latter is clear. By oneself I mean himself, herself and myself. I have deliberately avoided commenting about a common construction like the director or myself will answer all your questions. Does anyone know how correct that is? Shed some light in the comment box below

I

Perhaps I ought to have started with this, nevertheless let’s look at it. I is more or less the opposite of me.  Only use I when you are the subject in the sentence just like you do with he and she. When you use I together with another noun or pronoun to form the subject, I always comes second.

·         E.g. I am talking to you

·         Dennis and me I are talking to you.

Remember, for subject use I, for object stick to me and myself for reflexive and emphasis. They are not interchangeable at all!

Have a nice week ahead and take care of yourself J

Literally …

Our atrocious use of language is a common phenomenon, and worse still becoming more acceptable day by day. From misuse of words to non-standard sentence structures we haven’t spared any branch of linguistics. Often we defend ourselves by saying that English language is flexible and dynamic but this isn’t a justification; I choose the prescriptivism path.

Let’s explore a bit of semantics today; the meaning of some words in English has evolved sometime due to ignorant or careless usage. Sometimes someone has just learnt a new word and they want to use it in every phrase they utter. While such change maybe inevitable, it should be nipped in the bud. Use of words in ways that are antithetical to the actual meaning not only alters with the clarity of the word meaning but also destroys the aesthetic beauty of language.  

One such word is “literally”. Literally is misused in the sense that it is either used incorrectly or unnecessarily. Worse still, literally is most of the times used to mean the opposite of what it is supposed to; using literally to mean figuratively while these two words share an antonymous semantic relationship is wrong in as much as language changes. It is like saying hot while you mean cold without telling us it is opposite day!

Let’s struggle and get this right; no way are you literally exploding with excitement because someone surprised you on your birthday! You were literally figuratively dying of laughter as you watched your favourite stand-up comedian!

©Cyanide&Happiness (explosim.net)

If something is literally happening it is actually happening. I know someone will say it is used for exaggerating or stressing a point but it is not really the best of ways to do so! Striving to sound sophisticated and people also use it is even more catastrophic because where I come from people say literally even when they mean literary (Let’s not go there now please!)

©theoatmeal.com