I have been paying attention to television news and commercials (and chyrons, where I have seen a couple of misspellings recently). Here is some of what I have heard! Of course speech is different from writing, and you can’t go back and correct speech, so the guilty probably (hopefully) would not have written this way.
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The images speak for itself.
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In order for myself . . . (oh, please don’t use myself where it doesn’t belong!)
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News Realise (in an e-mail from a fire department)
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His whereabouts are unknown. (Yes, but even though “are” is more common, “it’ still seems right to me!)
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I follow the money where they take me.
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Direct any questions to Bob, Scott, or I. ( I where it doesn’t belong!)
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The ship represented power, and then it sunk. (sank please)
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Myself and the guest are side by side in the video.
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It was a moment where… (should be when)
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There’s myself… (pointing to herself in a photo)
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Please e-mail myself or some of the other people.
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Like I said… (very common, but should actually be As I said because there is a subject and a verb)
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…where you want your books at. (said by a person in publishing)
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Expecially (said by a person in publishing)
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OfTEN with the T pronounced (again a publishing person)
A judge on a cooking show just said, “This was very fun”. It just felt wrong. Are we just getting lazier in our speech?
Well, it is better than funner! And I think it is probably okay….but I do think we are getting lazier in our speech.
I have noticed the reporters on our San Francisco Bay Area news stations have a habit of adding a pronoun right after the noun. Examples: The firefighters, they responded to a grass fire on Hanson Lane. Arlene Miller, she drove to town in her new car.
Ew! Kids used to talk that way in elementary school. That is awful!
RE: #6.
I advise (I was so tempted to use “advice” here) my students to remove all the other people from the list and see if it sounds OK.
1. “Kathy, John, and (I or me) went to the movie.”
Would you say, “I went to the movie” or “Me went to the movie”?
2. “Direct any questions to Bob, Scott, or (I or me),”
Would you say “Direct any questions to I” or “Direct any questions to me”?
Simple test without getting into subjects and objects, which can get confusing even to native speakers. It’s surprising how many ESL/EFL students are aware of what sounds right without knowing the rules.
Tony
Yes, Tony. That is definitely the best and easiest way to teach that one. I find that those who speak English as a second language have much better grammar than the rest of us!
Ain’t that the truth! How often have I had to restrain myself from correcting and returning someone’s emails?
Yup! I get it!
One of my pet hates (hate is actually too tame a word) is using the reflexive because people seem to think it’s a smarter or more sophisticated pronoun.
I was in a shop yesterday and an assistant asked “Can I help yourself?”
Agree. But I don’t think I have heard anything as awful as your example! Yuck!