I was surprised a week or so ago to hear Grant say something like he sent a gift to Martha and I. It's an error made only with plural indirect objects. No one would ever say he sent a gift to I. I hear this error all the time. Do you think our language is changing?
John Middleton
I don't know that it's actually changing, but I've been around to see it happen and I know exactly where it came from. A whole generation of kids ran indoors to ask their moms "Hey, Mom, can me and Scott go over to his house and play with his—", only to be interrupted more or less gently by Mom correcting: " 'Can Scott and I go over to his house...' "
"Yeah, yeah, can Scott and I go over to his house....?" And once that was thoroughly drilled into our heads, almost a third of us turned out to have gotten the lesson wrong. Then the poets added their weight, because sometimes "It happened one day to you and I" rhymes when "...you and me" doesn't. So now a lot of contemporary Americans think it's "...and I". It's up to the rest of us to jump up and correct them, or it'll happen to yet another generation.