Reader Feedback: Sleeping “Pallet” and Handling Compound Subjects and Objects

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Recently, we were talking about the word palate, P-A-L-L-E-T. Remember this, Grant?

Angela had called us to say that when she was growing up in Texas, she used this term all the time to describe the kind of bed that you make on the floor for a sleepover, maybe with blankets, a pillow. But after Angela moved to Wisconsin, she found that nobody in her adopted home knew what she was talking about.

And we had discussed how it was a term that’s more commonly heard in the South and the South Midlands and about how the word pallet also appears in the Bible in the book of John.

And after that call, we heard from Terry Schmidt in Dallas, who wrote us to say, lots of memories of sleeping on a pallet as a child from Oklahoma City. And Terry also reminded us that there’s a great blues folk song called Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor. I can’t believe we didn’t mention that. It’s been recorded by a lot of the greats like Mississippi John Hurt and Doc Watson. I love his version. Lucinda Williams and Jillian Welch all have versions of this. And part of it goes, honey, make me a pallet down on your floor. Make me down a pallet on your floor. Honey, make it down. Make it soft and low. Then maybe my good gal, she won’t know.

So it’s like the guy’s got a gal on the side. Yeah, a little spare change over there. Yeah, a little spare change. Yeah, so keep it on the pallet.

We also received a lot of email and phone messages about the conversation that you and I had with Art from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. He’s the guy who was sitting at a family meal when his daughter said, me and my friends are going to the movies. You remember that one? And his mother-in-law corrected her by saying, my friends and I are going to the movies. And, of course, this was accompanied by the classic rolling of the eyes, as only an adolescent can do, at the dinner table.

And poor Art called us because he was trapped in the middle. He was wondering, who is the keeper of those grammatical rules? Are they changing? And when is it okay?

So the problem was me and I versus, right? Yeah, me and my friends are going to the movies. And we gave a kind of wonky answer about the levels of formality and informality in language. And we heard from a whole lot of listeners who said to us, you know what, there’s really no excuse for saying that incorrectly, for using the words me and I, because the grammatical rule isn’t that hard. They were saying, you know, it’s not, as I like to say, it’s not rocket surgery.

Listener Jerry Wellner explained it like this. He wrote, an easy way to figure out which is correct is to leave the other person out of the sentence. Someone might say he gave it to Joe and I, but he wouldn’t say he gave it to I. Also, he might say me and Joe are going to a movie, but wouldn’t say me am going to a movie. And he’s right. I mean, it’s not that hard. And if someone explains it to you well, it should be fairly easy to get it.

And Andy Anderson argued even more forcefully. He said, this is not an issue of formal versus informal use of the language. This is a matter of correct and incorrect grammar. This is and has been a standard rule of grammar for a long time. The problem seems to be that we no longer teach grammar in school, not to mention you would never say me went to the movies. I may be old fashioned, but I’m tired of hearing supposedly educated people say things like her and Mike went with Larry and I. Suffice it to say that no one ever lost a job because they spoke grammatically correct English.

Interesting. So there’s lots of layers here, lots of great responses. If you’ve got an opinion on this, by all means, send us an email, words@waywordradio.org, or let us know on the telephone, 877-929-9673.