Did you know that the many grammatical idiosyncraies stem from our mother tongue?
For instance, students use six full stops to represent an ellipsis in Chinese. However, the English language only requires three full stops for the same.
In fact, students are so used to saying the following sentences in Chinese, or even Malay, that they tend to mirror them unthinkingly in English, like so:
1. Me and my friends went to the zoo.
2. My friends and me went to the zoo.
3. I and my friends went to the zoo.
Unfortunately, none of the above are grammatically correct. Here’s why:
• Sentence 1: Never, ever, EVER start a sentence with an object pronoun -- in this case, ‘me’. As its name suggests, object pronouns are used when referring to a secondary item in a sentence. Only Tarzan can say “Me Tarzan, you Jane”.
• Sentence 2: Though the word ‘me’ seems to take the place of an object pronoun, it is actually a subject pronoun in this compound sentence. There are two sentences here:
(a) My friends went to the zoo.
(b) I went to the zoo. (not ‘me’)
• Sentence 3: Think of the English language as a gentleman; polite, courteous, opening the doors for others. In this sentence, ‘my friends’ must be introduced first rather than ‘’I’. Moral of story? Always be the gentleman.
