Pronoun Case: Celebrity Grammar with Ariana Grande!

Welcome back to Celebrity Grammar, where you learn better grammar from the tweets of celebrities. Today we are going to be talking about Ariana Grande and pronoun case.

So lets get into it. Take a look at Ariana’s tweet:

“thank you @gma for letting my babes and I celebrate this morning !!!!! love you so much. thank you. #DangerousWomanOutNow”

Can you spot the error?

What is Pronoun Case?

If we recall, pronouns are those little words that refer to something, like he, she, it, they, etc…

There are two cases of pronouns– subject and object. You can have she and you can have her. She and her both refer to a female and are both singular. However, she refers to a subject and her refers to an object.

Example:

Wrong: Her went to the store.

Right: She went to the store.

Pronoun case is all about choosing whether something should be a pronoun subject or a pronoun object. Here’s another example:

WRONG: Ariana doesn’t want you to give I a donut.

Right: Ariana doesn’t want you to give me a donut.

When you give something to someone, that someone becomes an indirect object. When something is in the object position, it has to be in the “object case.” In this situation, the object case is me not I. I is a subject. Me is an object.

Sure that was easy.  But this becomes a little bit more confusing when more words are involved.:

Wrong: Ariana doesn’t want you to give the girls and I a donut.

Right: Ariana doesn’t want you to give the girls and me a donut.

A good way to check is to remove what’s in front of the pronoun (i.e. “the girls and..”) and read the sentence again. If it doesn’t make sense then the pronoun case you’re using is wrong.

Wrong: Ariana doesn’t want you to give the girls and I a donut.

Now the error is easier to spot, right?

Let’s look at why people make this mistake, in particular between I and me. There’s another rule at play that are confusing people. That rule is that generally we don’t like to lead out with first person pronouns:

“I AND Ariana…” vs Ariana AND I— which is not always right. Everyone has always taught you to put the I second. Somehow a lot of us have concluded that as long as the I comes second, then the sentence is correct. That’s only half the rule. The I is still a subject, and whether it’s first or second is a whole other piece of the puzzle.  “You and me” can be right, too!

Let’s look back at Ariana’s tweet:

“thank you @gma for letting my babes and I celebrate this morning !!!!! love you so much. thank you. #DangerousWomanOutNow”

Now cross off the intervening words:

“thank you @gma for letting my babes and I celebrate this morning !!!!! love you so much. thank you. #DangerousWomanOutNow”

Now correct the tweet:

“thank you @gma for letting my babes and me celebrate this morning !!!!! love you so much. thank you. #DangerousWomanOutNow”