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For anyone unsure when to use I or me, remove the “and X” and see if the sentence makes sense:
My twin and I in the 80s > I in the 80s ❎
Me and my twin in the 80s > me in the 80s ✅
My twin and me in the 80s
~>my twin in the 80s ✅
The 80s and I in my twin?
Illegal in most states.
80 twins in me
I had a teacher that was very confident it was always 'X and I' and it was very hard to unlearn that.
I think that the way we were taught it was wrong.
It seemed that every time that I used “me and x” I was corrected to say “x and I”. They never gave a reason why it should be “x and I” so it seemed like it should always be that way. I imagine that there were cases where I wasn’t corrected because “me and x” was the correct way to say it but you don’t remember when they don’t correct you.
For convoluted linguistic reasons, "x and me," is correct and the default expression in English for this type of subject. If I recall, "x and I" is how it would be said in Latin, and I believe the desire to sound more educated // "proper" (like Latin) was the original reason that this phrase was pushed onto children in schools, by well-intentioned but ignorant school masters.
This is good when there's no verb after, right?
Me and my twin jumped in the pool.
Vs
My twin and I jumped in the pool.
Incomplete sentences make it difficult, such as the OP.
Your example is great:
- Me jumped in the pool.
- I jumped in the pool.
The second sentence is correct, so you would go with, “My twin and I jumped in the pool.”
Similar example:
- The rain got me and my twin soaking wet.
- The rain got my twin and I soaking wet.
Simplify them:
- The rain got me soaking wet.
- The rain got I soaking wet.
The first sentence is correct, so go with, “The rain got me and my twin soaking wet.”
If "me and my twin" is a short form of the sentence "This is me and my twin." then it is actually more correct to say "This is I and my twin."
So I think this is just language drifting. In English, we use the objective under posts like this. That is to say that "Me" is what you'd normally say to post this. But that's because language has shifted so that "This is I." sounds wrong. (To be clear, it is proper.)
In German, you would use the nominative here. That is "ich" translating to "I". I believe English is the outlier here when we consider what grammatical case most languages would use here.
To be clear "Me and my twin in the 80s." is not wrong. But if you needed it to be a proper and complete sentence "This is my twin and I in the 80s." is correct.
That’s all well and good for sheep, but what are we to do?!