Dirty Pronouns and Out-of-Style Verbs

Once when I was complaining about having to clean my house before visitors arrived, my mother said to me, “They will notice if it’s dirty, but not if it’s clean.” The same basic principle applies to spoken English in non-standard or standard usage.

Before I elaborate, I want to clarify my terms. “Standard” does not mean “correct,” just as “non-standard” does not mean “wrong.” We all have a language wardrobe, and like we choose particular clothing for different occasions, we should tailor our word choices and language usage to fit our purpose and audience.

Standard English in speech also does not mean the absence of an accent. Eudora Welty had a highly inflected Southern drawl, but she never broke the rules of Standard English when she spoke.

If someone who knows your level of education and then hears a glaring error in your English usage, that person is very likely to lose respect for you, regardless of your insistence that English majors spend more time reading great literature than diagramming sentences. To maintain your credibility, you should make sure your speech accurately reflects your knowledge, especially when you are interviewing for a job, answering questions after a presentation, speaking to a professor that you’ve just met, testifying in court, or trying to convince the parents of your new significant other that you are the most intelligent, classy partner for their beloved spawn--that is, unless you claim the Cookie Monster as your father.

The most common slips in spoken English involve pronoun choices and conjugation of verbs. I’ll give some common examples:

1) Non-standard pronouns: “Me and Tom are going to Lexington tonight,” “Me and her decided to stay home,” or “Him and I aren’t dating anymore.”

Solution: The best way to avoid these errors is to be conscious of your pronoun choice intended for yourself. If you want to tell someone about your planned trip to drive alone to Lexington, you wouldn’t say, “Me is going.” Instead, you’d use the pronoun “I.” If you want to mention your plans with your friend, add the person’s name to your personal pronoun: “Tom and I are going to Lexington,” “She and I decided to stay home,” and “He and I aren’t dating anymore.”

2) Non-standard verb conjugation: “I seen the movie,” “I done the work,” “I have went to class every day.”

Solution: This misuse may take more practice than the pronoun habit, and the best route to prevent it might require substituted synonyms. Alternatives might include “watched” instead of “seen,” “finished” instead of “done,” and “attended” instead of “have went.” If you want to change this speech habit, you may need to memorize the rules of conjugation:
• I see, I saw, I have seen;
• I do, I did, I have done;
• I go, I went, I have gone.

When you are speaking with your peers, your speech should relax; you have surely met their criteria for friendship and do not need to impress them. If your peer group includes people who are also working on degrees in English, enlist them in your goal to improve your use of spoken English—after all, you’d surely help each other decide the right clothes to wear to your next big event, and afterward you can kick back in your most comfortable hoodie and your faded Chucks.

I need to clean my house now because even my dogs are noticing the dirt.