Tricky Pronouns: ‘I’ or ‘ME’?

Are you 100% certain when to use “I” and when to use “me” in English? Which one is a subject pronoun and which one is an object pronoun? Watch this important lesson to learn the difference between these two commonly confused pronouns. This basic, serious mistake could cost you grades, jobs, and promotions. Make sure you know what’s correct every single time, to optimize your English communication. Next, take the quiz at https://www.engvid.com/tricky-pronouns-i-or-me/, then watch the other lesson of mine that I mention in this lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoHCUX5P0ow&list=PLxSz4mPLHWDZgp8e6i0oyXOOrTAAaj0O7&index=196

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid. In this lesson you'll learn the difference between two confusing pronouns, and they are: "I" and "me". Okay? Now, unfortunately, mistakes are being made everywhere with these two simple pronouns Okay? Whether you're reading on the internet, or whether you're watching a show, or anything else, you'll see people making lots of mistakes here, so it's very important that you watch this lesson so that you know what's right and you do you what's right, especially if you're taking an exam, like the IELTS, or the TOEFL, or the TOEIC, or anything else; or if you're applying for a job, because this kind of mistake is a very basic mistake, and you don't want to make it ever. Okay. So, I'm going to show you exactly how to know when to use "I" and when to use "me". All right? So, let's have a look.

Now, as I said, we are focusing on "I" and "me" here; we... I do have another lesson in which I talk about all of the pronouns because sometimes all of them are mixed up, and I'll give you a link to that in the lesson description so you can watch that later if you want to get an overview of all of the pronouns, but let's start with this important one because very often we are talking about ourselves, and for that we need to say: "I" or "me". All right? Here we go.

So, first of all, both "I" and "me" are pronouns. Okay? Now, the pronoun basically takes the place of a noun. All right? That's a grammatical explanation; don't worry about it too much. The most important thing that you have to remember here is that "I" is used as the subject of a sentence, and it does the action in a sentence. All right? And "me" is an object; it receives the action of the sentence. All right? To understand exactly how that works, let's look at some examples.

So, here we said: "I called Steve." And "I" is the subject. Right? "I called", so I am doing the action. Whereas here: "Steve called me." Now Steve is doing the action, so "Steve" is the subject, and "me", here, is the object. Right? Yes, I heard you say that. Yes. It's correct. Okay? Steve called me, so I received the action, I received the call. Okay? Here I made the call, so I did the action; there I received it. Got it? It's always like that. Okay? "I" is always going to be the one that does the action; "me" is the one that receives the action.

All right, let's look at some more examples. "I talked to Mary." Okay? Again, "I" is the subject, and so we used it here. And here: "Mary talked to me." All right? So, here, we have "me", again, as the object which received the action. Who is the subject here? "Mary". All right? "Mary" was the subject here; "Steve" was the subject here, but here we're focusing on: What's the object? "me".

Now, another clue to know that you need to use "me" and not "I" is because we see here a preposition, right? "to". So, whenever you see a preposition, after that what needs to follow is a object pronoun; not the subject pronoun. So: "to me", "for me", "before me", "after me", "with me", okay? All that kind of thing. Or even here: "Steve called me.", "Steve texted me.", "Steve asked me.", "Steve answered me." Okay? But, again: "me", "me", "me". All right? When it's... And you'll see that it's usually at the end of the sentence, whereas the subject is at the beginning of the sentence. Okay. So, that's the basic stuff. This is when we have one subject or one object, so that's the basics.

Now, where do people make most of the mistakes? When... Somehow when we have multiple subjects or multiple objects. So even though they know this rule, most of the time most people, somehow when there are multiple subjects or objects, for some reason people get a little bit confused. So, that's okay. Let's clarify all your confusion right now.

So, let's look at this example: "Sarah and I are friends." Okay? So, here we had more than one subject; we had a compound subject. But we still have to say: "I" because it's a subject. Okay? "Sarah and I". All right? Not: "Sarah and me"; "Sarah and I". Because... And also, another way you can tell: Take out "Sarah", and then you say: "I am friends". Right? We don't say: "me am friends" or something like that. So, you have to use "I" here, but let's look at the other side of the equation. "The gift is from Sarah and me." […]