IF you are clear about not writing "Me is going out " or "Him has a date tonight," why do you then feel comfortable with the plural "Me and my boyfriend are doing such and such"?

How I write and how I speak are entirely different. I often think to quickly to form the proper grammar. I usually am correct, but I speak the moment I think of what I want to say. I gave up a long time ago on trying to filter that.

Grammar is not a set of rules; it is a description of the patterns of language usage.

Moreover, in the example you cite, there is still a word available which fits the role of ‘subject’ in the clause – “girlfriend”; from that, I would surmise that the sentence is actually much easier to parse than your counterexamples.

To annoy the grammar nazi’s.

It sounds and flows better.

Even though it’s wrong, it sounds right. “My boyfriend and I” sounds very stodgy and formal, even though it’s correct.

My guess is that saying “me and my boyfriend” puts more emphasis on me. If you say “my boyfriend and I” then more emphasis is on “my boyfriend”. And for some reason, saying “I and my boyfriend”, while not wrong, sounds odd to most people. So in that case, the only way to put emphasis on the speaker is to say “me and my boyfriend”.

I write the way I speak. I wouldn’t put myself first in a conversational sentence.

My family & I enjoyed a day out in our garden. <—-That’s how I speak.

I think the problem is that the second subject (in your example, the boyfriend) distracts from the fact that “me” is incorrect. Because the second subject is next to the verb instead of the “me,” it’s more difficult to recognize that it’s incorrect. If you’ll notice, people don’t generally say things like “my boyfriend and me went…” because it is clear that “me went” is incorrect.

The better question is why the same people that make this mistake think it’s correct to caption a picture with phrases like “My boyfriend and I at the mall!”…No, that’s when you use “me.”

“Me is going out”.......“Him has a date tonight”
Sounds perfectly okay, if you happen to be of caribbean descent.
“Chill mon!”

Speaking of Da Ali G Show, that’s how he talks!

I think it’s the plural verb “are”’ that throws people into a tizzy. People mistakenly say “Me and the other guy are,” but they would know instinctively that if the other guy is out of town it would just be “I’ with the singular form of the verb, “is.”

Feels me, duz you?

@gailcalled . . . what me and my boyfriend do is really none of your business . . .

Because they don’t know any better, and it doesn’t sound wrong to them. It rings odd in my ears and, being a teacher, I get to learn them better. :).

I agree- that is an atrocious misuse of your beloved language!

Anyone with a legit claim to English fluency knows it should be, “Me and my boyfriend is doing such and such”. ;-p

They’d rather be comfortable than speak correctly. As a teenager, I was really uncomfortable , with responding. “This is she,” when asked for on the phone. Then I decided I’d rather sound intelligent and educated than not too bright and unschooled. It’s a personal choice we all have to make unless we are not very intelligent and/or educated.

@Kardamom it is so interesting that it sounds stodgy and formal to you! Maybe it is because I was raised by an English teacher, but bad grammar sounds odd and out of place to me.

I wonder if seeing the error written out makes it appear more glaring so it is more likely to be caught. Kind of like when we are trying to remember how to spell a word we write it out to see if it looks right.

@Brian1946: No. You are mistaken. It should be “Me and my boyfriend be goin’ to the store.” At least in New York that’s what we hear.

@jca

Me will stand corrected when me and my wife am back in New York. ;-)

I am not comfortable with it. I would say and write “My boyfriend and I…” It doesn’t sound stodgy to me.

That being said, many people make grammatical, syntax, usage and spelling errors when tossing off comments and posts on the internet. We are not writing papers or articles. We all make mistakes, all of us. It doesn’t necessarily mean people don’t know any better or are stupid or uneducated; much of the time these errors are just that, errors, mistakes.

Even @gailcalled is guilty of making mistakes and having typos in her posts on Fluther. :-)

I did not specify the Internet or fluther, and I have often make mistakes and owned up to them when either I or someone else recognized them, which is irrelevant here.

I should have specified for the intent of my question that word order is moot.

“Me and my mother are going shopping = My mother and me are…”

“I and my mother are..” is less common, I guess, than “My mother and I are…”

It’s, apparently, commutative.

@gailcalled “I have often make mistakes” love it.

@gailcalled I didn’t assume that you meant only the order in your example, I just very rarely hear anyone say this the other way around.