“This is she” vs. “This is her”

Correction:

Beverly said:
__ I find that the easiest way to know which is grammatically correct is to add a word or phrase, and subtract a word or phrase.
‘No one could entertain like her could entertain.’
‘No one could entertain like she could entertain.’__

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we replace the entire “she could entertain” part with “her” as in her way of entertaining or her ability to entertain.Then you cannot compare the two sentences.

When I replace she with her it is mainly to shorten the sentence. To me, at least, “No one could entertain like she” sounds incomplete without ”could entertain”

Thing is, you would not reply for someone else by saying "HER is not in, is there a message?", you would say "SHE is not in." So.... the correct response would be "THIS IS SHE.."

To jlr:

jlr asks: "Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we replace the entire “she could entertain” part with “her” as in her way of entertaining or her ability to entertain. Then you cannot compare the two sentences."

Consider yourself corrected. No, we do not replace the entire phrase 'She could entertain' part with 'Her'. If someone asked you, 'Who could entertain?', would you reply, 'Her could!' No, you would say, 'She could!' Would you say 'Her could entertain'? I don't think so.

To Oleg:
Oleg writes: In Russia we use IT IS ME more often than IT IS I

Hmmmm. In Russia, would you not more often use "??? - ?"? (ROTF,LMHO)

The other thing I look to add is some people think 'this is she' is more formal for some reason.. I think there's a term for that in linguistics, when people think they know the real way but they really don't. It usually comes as a result of 'this is she' being more foreign and, therefore, more correct, or more formal. Ok, I know that is not a good explanation, but if you know what I'm talking about, you will understand.

In school I remember hearing: e.g. Yes, this is "she" and not her but can you also say Yes, this is me??? is this informal?? I left USA many moons ago....HELP!

This is for those of you who argue for the common usage concept. Every action has a thought behind it. The fact is, many think and say, "The phrase 'me and her are going...' sounds atrocious!" The very fact that it is a common thought and saying, makes it atrocious. That is if you are for the commonality argument.

You cannot argue commonality while omitting common opinions.

i learned a lot by reading your comments.

i guess people just need to check how pronouns are used. ^^ thank you so much! ^^

So, if somebody asks me on the phone: "Can I speak to...?" which one is the proper answer: "This is she" or maybe "This is her"?

"Wow, I wonder if the original poster ever thought their question would trigger a five year debate of the topic."

You've got that right!

My suggestion to all? "This is her" is fine.

Now, get over it.

I am a native Polish speaker. In my native language it wouldn't make much sense to answer the phone by saying either "this is she' or "this is her". Also, I don't believe this phrase was meant to be a short version of "This is she speaking" (or "This is her speaking") as press.uchicago.edu is suggesting in the original post since the correct expression conveying the implied meaning is simply "She is speaking" (and not "Her is speaking" btw). I think that "She is speaking" or simply saying "This is 'insert your name' " is the most grammatically correct way to reply to the caller when answering your phone. However, the expression in question is a very common way to answer the phone in modern English. I use it myself and believe the "This is she" version to be correct. I'll attempt to explain why below. What is present in my native language, was originally present in Old English and has been lost over time in the modern English is the presence of grammatical case. Modern English seems to utilize only 3 forms of grammatical case while Old English and many other modern languages use more than 3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case.
When a person answers the phone, whether they (not them) are trying to say that they are speaking or they (again - not them) are trying to equate themselves to the person the caller is asking for they are communicating in the nominative (subjective) case and hence "This is she" is the accurate version. If we were to debate phrases in other than nominative case the answer would probably require some more analysis since for example the modern English case of objective ("her") could correspond to either the accusative, dative or ablative case however there is no doubt that we are debating a nominative/subjective case.

So say we all!

@Ed22SAS Or she?! x

"Shy and tired-eyed am I today."
-Laura Marling

It is this line she wrote after the eyes that she called hers gazed upon all posts written by those who typed them on the page that you, I and we are all reading.

I thought I, She, He, We, They are used as subjects and Her, Him, Her, Them, Us are used as objects (not sure if object is the term)
ex: It's me. - in this sentence the subject is It and the sentence is saying that It is Me or in another case like in the sentence This is a pen, This is equal to It and pen is equal to me.
Correct sentences for me:
She and I are going out. (subject:She and I object:going out)
It is between her and me. (subject:It object:her and me)
I am her. (subject:I object:her)

Her can be used in more than one way right? Not just for possession. Why don't other people know that?! Isn't that weird? Her can be an object too aside from using it for possession (her ball, her hand, etc.). Ex: I told her. (subject:I object:her)

And you can't just interchange the subject and object in the sentence. Ex: "It is me." cannot be "Me is it." To make the sentence this way, it will be "I am it." So you can't use that "interchange" thing as a basis for making a rule like "She is me." is wrong because "Me is she." is wrong, because we all know that the first sentence is right and the 2nd is wrong.
"This is her." is not wrong. I've read a post saying that it is wrong because when you interchange the nouns, it will be "Her is this."! What?! When you interchange the nouns in "This is her.", it will be "She is this." (meaning: she is this person right here) "She" is used as a subject and when it becomes an object, it becomes "Her". Get it?

You are smarter than I is different from You are smarter than I am and it's not a short version. If you're going to use the first sentence, it should be You are smarter than me. In You are smarter than I am, "I am" refers to how smart the person referred to is. It is not the same as the "I am" in the sentence "I am a person". which is the subject in this case and not the object.

I've heard characters in tv and movies use "This is she." for me, this is not grammatically correct because there is no rule that can say that it is correct. Maybe some people are just used to saying it or heard it from supposedly smart people and trusted them right away. It's not wrong to use it as long as other people understand, but, you shouldn't use it in arguments like this.

There is no accusative form in English; you meant "objective". Not the same thing.

And the only "true" nominative forms occur only as a tiny corpus of pronouns: I, he, she, we, they and who - if you are one of those who still use "whom".

Or maybe we are just concerned about our knowledge and the possibility that some people are taught wrong about the english grammar which is used all the time and the fact that english grammar exams exist Ed22SAS you can't be sure about other people's intentions when they're not directly said and your post doesn't help anyone and therefore useless. I'm not sure why you're here when you don't intend to learn from these arguments that you read.

Two thoughts were brought to mind by this discussion:

1. There seem to be two schools of thought about grammar in general. One school puts the rules first and usage second; the other considers usage paramount and feels rules should always submit to common usage, which may be the simplest way of conveying a simple idea to another.

The people in the first group often consider those in the second group uneducated boors, and the second group frequently considers the first group to be out of touch snobs.

While I proudly consider myself part of the first group, I don't consider myself a snob; I simply love the beauty, subtlety, music and magic of language, and marvel in its form. I revel in finding the perfect word or case or combination to convey a particular shade of meaning. If someone considers language nothing more than a blunt tool for expressing basic thoughts, that is their prerogative, and I respect that. I happen to share their belief that getting your thought across is the most important thing, so I will subtly filter my speech, depending on whom I'm speaking with, and will gladly break grammatical rules if it helps to express a thought. That is one of the beauties of language; it can be as flexible as the speaker.

Having said that, I confess I do rue the erosion of simple, basic rules of grammar, which often does have the effect of watering down the subtlety of communication. For example, the case of Past Perfect seems to be rapidly becoming archaic. Many English speakers, particularly from the South, use the Past Tense (Preterite) conjugation when using "had" before the verb (Past Perfect tense). I know many educated speakers, particularly from the South, who will blithely say "I had WENT to the store". When asked about this, the most common reply is "But I had GONE to the store just SOUNDS wrong". This brings me to my second point.

2. I am a musician, and language, like music, was played (spoken) before the rules were codified, not the other way around. Unlike music though, language is not based on the immutable laws of physics (sound vibrations). The laws of music theory have no exceptions, any more than the Sun sets in the east sometimes. Language, however, is simply a product of our human minds, and so is subjective and constantly changing. The English we speak today is quite different from the English spoken 200 years ago, in the post-revolutionary US, and vastly different from that spoken 500 years ago, around Shakespeare's time. This change occurred, not in the grammar books, but on the street. This is a hard fact for many grammarians to accept, witness the Académie Française, which attempts to keep the French language "pure". This is a joke; you cannot "regulate" language. It has a life of its own, and will morph and evolve regardless of what any institution tries to impose upon it.

By definition, the way that a language evolves is by common usage, which will break whichever "rules" it wants, and then some future grammarian will come along and codify the new rules. You know a rule is archaic when a majority of native speakers, upon hearing an example of the old rule declare: "It just SOUNDS wrong".

This is simply a fact of grammatical life; a kind of "mob rule", if you will. It's up to each of us to find our own comfortable position on the continuum between the snobs and the mobs!

I think saying "C'est Moi!" is really better. Just speaking another language and do away with these pesky things

So if two people, say A and B visit someone, say C, and ring the doorbell, and C asks, "Is it A and B?", then what do A and B reply with - It is us, or it is we?

Going by the correct Grammatical usage as put forth by some people here in the case of ' this is she', the answer should be 'it is we'. However, it does not sound right. Opinions?

It is us, P.

'Us' is the disjunctive form of the first person plural personal pronoun (I, me singular, we, us plural) for use as the complement (after verb to be, so: I am me) and prepositions (with me, with us, etc).
There is a very ugly trend today to use the reflexive form 'myself' in place of the straightforward "I, me". So (heard on phone): "Myself and Sarah 'll see you at the pub" leading I suppose to - "Myself am at the pub now, Sarah is late".
Just stick to disjunctive and you won't go wrong.

In Scotland you are greeted with "Oh! It's yourself! You'll have had your tea." So regional variations, rich in colour and tone, entertain us too. Your A and B people had better have had their tea too, before visiting C, if he is a Scot, and who will say in a suspicious tone "It's yourselves, then!" and they must say "Aye, it's ourselves, aye, but we could do with a wee dram".

@P - I think you just answered your own question. But as some people have suggested that the phone example doesn't happen that often, I hope you don't mind if I rephrase your question. If somebody accused your Standard-English-speaking pair A and B of doing something, would they be more likely to say, in informal spoken language, 'It wasn't us' or 'It wasn't we'? I'd go for 'us', myself.

@Brus - Perhaps 'This is me (in the photo)' or 'This is us'. But 'I am me'? Sounds like something from 'I am the Walrus'. :)

Your disjunctive pronoun theory is interesting, although I've never seen this term used in any standard English grammar book. Those few sources that I've found which talk about disjunctive pronouns in English only use it for expressions like 'It's me', or solitary 'Me', which are certainly not accepted in those prescriptive grammars that insist on 'It is I'.

But even if we accept the idea of disjunctive pronouns for things like 'It's me', surely 'with me' and 'with us' are different. Everyone, prescriptivist and descriptivist alike, agrees that prepositions should always be followed by an objective form - 'Between you and me' - we don't need any special rule to explain that. It might be the case in French - 'Viens avec moi' - but English isn't French, and we don't have separate pronouns forms like 'moi' and 'lui'. We only have subjective, objective and possessive forms for pronouns.

Another thing worth noting is that when it is used, the subjective form is usually used without contractions - 'It is I', whereas the objective form is normally used with contractions, 'It's me', suggesting that the difference between the two is one of register - both are correct, but the former is rather formal. I might not use 'It is I', but I can't say it's incorrect. In French, on the other hand, 'C'est Je' is definitely not correct; you have no choice. This why 'I hae me doots' about extending this this idea of disjunctive pronouns to English.

I must add that the disjunctive pronoun 'me .. us' is used as the complement of the verb 'be' and the Scottish examples I gave above demonstrate some examples of 'myself .. yourselves' employed in place of 'me .. you'. This does not mean that you can use it as the subject of 'be': you cannot say "Myself 'll be waiting for ye" or "Yourselves will be wantin' in, then?" for example.

My mother did hear some Glaswegian girls in the Second World War making this suggestion to some Polish soldiers:

"If youse yins'll teach us yins Polish us yins'll teach youse yins English".

So here is an example of "us" used as the subject. But despite what they said it isn't really standard English, is it now?

Glad to make a Polish connection there, Warsaw Will.

WW: 'I am me' sounds wrong because the subject and complement are the same person, so the reflexive form "I am myself", (you are yourself ... he is himself ...) are required.

@Brus - My problem (one of them at least) is that neither 'I am me' nor 'I am myself' are natural English - nobody would ever say these, so I don't know why you'd want to use them to explain a grammatical point. 'This is me lying on the beach' or 'I'm really not feeling myself today' would give perfectly natural examples of 'me' and 'myself' as subject complements.

I'm afraid using artificial examples is one of my bugbears. There's one grammar website which, while explaining the passive, gives two examples - 'The dogs are loved by Suzanne' and 'The dogs are being loved by Suzanne', neither of which a native speaker would ever say. I write lots of grammar exercises myself, and make every effort to use natural examples. Otherwise it just confuses people.

Someone, like yourself, with a good knowledge of romance languages might find the term 'disjunctive pronoun' useful, but it doesn't seem to be a standard concept in English (except in explanations to French speakers, fro example). The entry for pronouns at Oxford Dictionaries online makes no mention of it, Collins has it but refers to French, and a linguistics book devoted to these very uses of pronouns has no reference to disjunctive pronouns at all. Those who use this term are transferring an idea from French and Italian, etc, which works for some things, but not others. And while the use of the disjunctive pronoun is mandatory in French, in English its use is frowned on by the traditionalists.

http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/pronouns
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/disjunctive-pronoun?showCookiePolicy=true
http://books.google.pl/books?id=gjRV0gU1W3oC&pg=PA134

Very interesting discussion (hard to find anything on the web regarding this issue).
Once again, Wiktionary illustrates it best (in my opinion):
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/me#Pronoun

- C'est vous?
- Oui, c'est moi.
So, the French have a word for it: moi. It means me in short phrases, such as prepositional phrases ( avec moi, chez moi ...). They say it is a disjunctive pronoun. Well, they say that in French, of course, but the point is that we too have 'me' as a disjunctive pronoun. This is why "It's me" doesn't hurt when you hear it the way "She asked Bob and I to supper", etc., hurts, or "She's coming with Lucy and I".
If in doubt use me, if you are rebuked or sense that you are thought remiss for using it just say you are using it disjunctively and not to be such a pedant.

She is the person to whom you are speaking.
Therefore, I prefer ”this is she” as the most correctly constructed version of that response. Jm2c
What do I know? I'm in the Navy...we use a different language altogether (scuttlebutt, starboard, forecastle/fo'c'sle, etc.).

As goofy pointed out no one ever points to a photograph of their childhood and says, "That's I!" It's ridiculous and any person who did that would be looked at with a rather odd expression... and rightly so.

Someone above proclaimed "Poorly formed language indicates poorly formed thought." However, thought is but one major purpose of language. One other major purpose of language is to communicate. I've known many great communicators who wouldn't touch your preapproved, prepackaged English with a space tether. The point is they are capable of conveying their meaning clearly and commanding respect through their communications better than any English professor I've ever known.

Stick that in your grammar text bible.

Until there is an truly objective scientific method for distinguishing proper language constructs I'll remain skeptical when ass-hats in conference rooms sit around deciding amongst themselves how I and everyone else should "properly form thoughts." Until then I'll continue to speak Americanese and leave the Queen's English to the snobs.

Someone above asked what "hobnobbery" had to do with this conversation. Not sure, but perhaps he meant hobnob, as in "a friendly, informal chat."

Nothing snobby about the Queen's English. If the 'Queen' part of the term confuses you, Mr. Quincy, you should know that in England the current royal family are thought of as newcomers and upstarts, or at least feel that way: there are many amusing quotes about the Queen speaking of certain of the nobility as "much too grand for the likes of us". Remember Queen Victoria spoke with a German accent, and George I could not speak English at all. Ever. Meanwhile the nobility includes families whose lineage stretches back to the Middle Ages.

Now, as for your "it is I" construction the clue is in French grammar and its labelling: "C'est moi" - 'ce' is the nominative subject, 'est' is the verb, and folk get stressed wondering what 'moi' might be, as it is nominative but it is not the subject, but the complement, and French uses the disjunctive pronoun 'moi', or 'toi' or 'lui' or whoever. The English form of this pronoun is similar to the accusative form: 'me, you, him, her, them' and so on. So we say "It's me" and that's why.

Have you met any English professors? You say the ones you've known can't communicate. The ones I've known communicated frightfully enthusiastically and well. That was long ago and far away. They raved most earnestly about literature, and showed little enthusiasm for grammar. Literature is not about grammar, and literary figures are not there to provide us with models of sound English sentence structure and grammatical forms, but about many things above and beyond this. I recall studying Chekhov as part of my A-level English many decades ago, but in fact the man penned his stuff in Russian, so we were in fact studying the drama form, not the language used. We had no need to read Russian to follow the plot of our studies.

So, Mr. Quincy, I have advised before and do so again, if you are ticked off for saying "it's me" then you must rise up, I say, to your full height, look your interlocutor in the eye, and say with hauteur, "I use the disjunctive pronoun, of course". So put that arrow in your quiver.

@Warsaw Will - I don't agree with everything you said, but gave you a thumbs up for the Hyacinth Bucket reference. :)

Grammar is important, and dumbing it down to 'normal spoken English' is not doing anyone any favours.

P.S. 'This is she/he.' She/He is this. Predicate nominative.

@Peter Reynolds,

You don't have knowledge of formal grammar, do you?

"This is she/he/it/I" is the formal form of "This is her/him/it/me". Your anecdotes are meaningless. It's not an Americanism nor a Britishism; it is formal grammar use.

*site

@Warsaw Will,

Yes, I was wrong about the anecdote. I will concede to that, but I will not concede to my despisal of his ignorant judgment of another person.

@Joy,

What my main issue is is stated in your own post (brackets for emphasis):

"Hence, I would like to proffer the hypothesis that the [unfamiliarity of the concept breeds contempt of the use]."

@Jasper "ignorant judgment of another person" - only unaware of how some women on another continent speak - if a British woman spoke like that she'd have to be a very odd one - and I *have* had some genuinely odd reactions from US customers who thought I was a telemarketer, apparently a breed which the US is seriously more plagued by than here in UK (even here we get quite a few). In any case I have learned since then (and before participating on this forum) that "This is she" is not odd in USA.

@Joy How would the men in your life and background answer the same questions to which you answer "This is SHE"?

Actually I am somewhat aware of the pronoun issues since some 20 years ago I tried translating "It's me" into Dutch when speaking to my Dutch host's children (should be "Ik ben het", not "Het is mij" which makes no sense to a Dutch person). Of course correct English says "It is I" (as can be seen in the King James version of the Bible). Do you wonderfully correct people who insist on using "This is she" because of grammar also say "It is I" because of the same grammar? Or at least do you NOT say "It's me"? ;)

I learned a fair bit about grammar from learning Dutch, a language which is very similar to English, although English and Dutch have developed in different ways, even since the 16th/17th century English of the King James Bible.

Another instance of correct grammar being insisted on by Americans in actual common speech is the use of "whom" in a much wider variety of circumstances than we use it in Britain, even to the point of compound words such as "whomever". This too sounds stilted to a British ear, though some of us too are aware of the theoretical grammatical distinction.

On the other hand my Texan wife and in-laws frequently use adjectives in place of adverbs in speech (even though they know not to write like that), and use "a" instead of "an" before a vowel (though there again they probably wouldn't write like that.

@Paul Reynolds,

There is nothing to correct in "It is she" vs. "It is I". They are two different personal pronouns. The only thing that could be seen as awkward is the use of the third person instead of the first person. Also not once have I criticized the use of "It is her/him/it/me/them" in comparison to "It is he/she/it/they/I". My issue was with what I interpreted as a slight twinge of superiority in your judgment. I pointed out formal grammar because of how you reacted to someone using 'she' instead of 'her'.

On 'whomever', the propagation of it might have increased since its use. This was typically found in the archaic form of 'whomsoever' and 'whosoever'.

I want to say your second-to-last paragraph seems like a generalization. I don't think prescriptivists are just Americans.

Now I'm confused. I'm sorry I came across as superior. I don't think I was really comparing "this is she" "with "this is her" - I would be unlikely to hear either except when phoning USA. If I heard "this is her" I would think it sounded a bit awkward/clumsy (wouldn't make a grammatical judgement); whereas uninformed as I was to the frequency of its US usage when I first heard "this is she" (a good number of years ago), it sounded to my uninformed British ear as though the person was being ironic and trying to sound like someone from the 19th century or further back.

I'm familiar with "whomsoever" as I was brought up on the King James Bible and still use that Bible. In Britain "whosoever" has become "whoever", and dictionaries and Google testify that "whomever" does exist even in UK, but I've never heard anyone use it in speech. I'd be vaguely aware that to use "whoever" as an object would be ungrammatical, but would feel it was too stilted to replace it with "whomever".

@Jasper - I really think you're making an interpretation I just don't see. Peter's 'offending' sentence was:

'The first time I heard "this is she" I thought the customer was being ironic because she was being asked if she was, say, Janet, by an unidentified caller'

I don't see any sense of superiority there at all. As Peter hadn't heard this expression being used before, he was puzzled, that's all. And even joy, who uses 'This is she' herself, far from taking umbrage, found Peter's observation interesting.

I hate to say it (because it really seems out of character), but I'm only getting a feeling of superiority from one person in this discussion: I quote - 'You don't have knowledge of formal grammar, do you?', ' I will not concede to my despisal of his ignorant judgment of another person.'

As regards 'whomever', its use seems to be on the increase:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=whomever%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cwhomever%3Aeng_gb_2012&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cwhomever%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cwhomever%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0

@Warsaw Will,

Yes, you're right. By my second post, I defended my position, distorting it at that, for the sake of defending it. I will admit to that and be judged accordingly. I acted in a bellicose and outright vulgar manner.

@Peter Reynolds,

I apologize. My behavior was unacceptable and uncivil. I don't expect you to accept it, nor do I want you to, only for the fact that my behavior was inexcusable. I hope you will continue post here on Pain in the English, despite my vitriol.

I think I won't be posting on Pain in the English for awhile. My apologies to all here.

Oh dear, all this talk of 'bellicose' and 'unacceptable' and 'vulgar'. 'Inexcusable' and apologies all over the place. Not a clue as to what need there is for apologies in the preceding debate about the correctness of saying "This is she".
Is this something to do with this new thing they teach children about not being 'judgmental'? Can't make head nor tail of it myself. Makes no sense at all. I believe 'political correctness' comes into it somewhere, an American thing now but originating as one of Lenin's little jokes. (Bad news to study the law and end up becoming a judge, only not to be allowed to be judgmental!)
Calm down, children, and have another glass of wine, I say! Come back, Jasper, and post away, come on, do.

@Jasper

Don't worry about it. I'm not worrying (and I have before on the odd occasions when I've genuinely fallen out with folk on other forums). On this occasion I felt it was more of a misunderstanding (that we were at cross purposes) than anything else. And of course we British do tend to feel our version of English is superior, so that may in fact have come across. ;-)

And certainly don't feel you have to refrain from posting because of me. This was the first time I had posted here (as far as I recall) and I did so after a Google search revealed this discussion. So I butted in without knowing anything about the mood of the forum. I may well have been a pain in the ..........

@Jasper - I'll certainly echo Brus's last paragraph and Peter's last comment. We all have our sillier moments (especially me when I get goaded into defending the indefensible), and your comments are usually very moderate and constructive.

What's more PITE has been rather barren lately, with days on end without comments for me to react to. We need everyone, old hands like yourself and newbies like Peter, who I notice is busy posting on other threads as well, so you don't seem to have put him off. :) :)

Amen brethren.
In an unguarded unthinking non-PC moment in the supermarket I automatically waved back to a small child instead of turning away PC-wise ... it's just not 1960 anymore. I have also noticed that "bitch" and "slut" have become highly offensive now whilst OMG is just commonplace. And nobody says "crikey" anymore.

@Brus,

I'm not sure it is political correctness. It's closer to me acting like an a**hat.

@Peter Reynolds,

Still, a forum shouldn't be rabid.

@Warsaw Will,

You live in Poland right? I have been hearing about the Ukrainian revolt that's been happening. I'm not saying it's likely that it'll spill over but I am concerned about the proximity between Poland and Ukraine.

@jayles,

I think it's more of an increase in cynicism about people and a greater awareness of dangerous people in general.

Now, let's put this all behind us.

@Jasper Parts of western Ukraine were at one time part of Poland =- Lviv (or Lvow) for example was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939. Other bits were part of the (Austro) Hungarian Empire until the Treaty of Trianon around 1921.
Linguistically, "Ukrainian" used to slide off toward Polish/Slovak in the west, village by village. There was a survey of language use in Eastern Europe carrried out around 1920, which was supposedly used to determine the current borders, creating Romania, Czechoslovakia and so on.
Out in the Ukrainian countryside things stil tend to look like they did in 1950.....

Recently I met a Ukrainian family. The wife is of Polish Jewish extraction, as were a whole couple of villages where everybody had the same two Polish Jewish surnames. This family live in Odessa and speak Russian, as I gather is true of a large part of the population of Odessa.

@Jasper - I don't think it's likely to spill over into Poland unless things get very nasty. The Polish people were very strong supporters of the Orange revolution, however, and have a strong affinity with the people of Western Ukraine. Although it wasn't always like that; when Lviv / Lwów was part of Poland there was a lot of very nasty fighting between Poles and Ukrainian nationalists. Most of the Poles from Lwów went to Kraków after the war, I think.

@jayles - there were large communities of Poles in the west, both in villages and in Lwów, and presumably in the large aristocratic estates as well. There was a similar situation in Lithuania, with a large Polish population of Vilnius / Wilno, which was Polish territory until the war. But it was a bit like Hungary before Trianon. At one time Poland stretched to the Black Sea, but of course many of the people who lived on Polish territory weren't actually Poles, but Ukrainians, Lithuaninas, Tartars etc (not to mention the Jews and Germans who lived in current Polish territory. Polish borders are today more or less back to where they started, reflecting the early Poland of 1200 or so.

Do you have a link to that map

The map is on Wikipedia under "treaty of trianon"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Ethnographic_map_of_hungary_1910_by_teleki_carte_rouge.jpg

Note the area covered is "Greater Hungary" and includes parts of modern Slovakia as north as the Tatra mts, most of Romania, hunks of Croatia, Serbia, and a good slither of SW Ukraine. The red areas indicate Hungarian speaking places, and so on. Widely touted by Hungarian Nationalists - think the current PM, as well as the Rightists (Jobbik) - and still taught in Hungarian schools so the gripe lives on.

But if you're an American "he" you'd be more likely to say "thaaat's me!" than either "this is he" or "this is him" so the days of women saying the female equivalent of either are probably numbered?

OK, as I really can't get my head around when anyone would say either 'This is she' or 'This is her', how about this - which pair sound more natural?

That's her over there. This will be him coming now.
That's she over there. This will be he coming now.

Exactly the same grammatical structure - copular verb with theoretically a subject complement rather than an object - bot who would ever say the latter pair?

@ Peter (in belated Re: to your question posted Feb 24)-

Two categories:
1) The professional men in my life tend to answer with a confirmation of their identity.

"Is this John Smith?"
"Yes, this is John."

2) My homeboys answer:

"Yup"

Not to say I haven't heard "This is he." I have, just less often than I hear the women in my family use it. And admittedly, I hear "This is him." occasionally too. It may have something to do with a belief peculiar to my family that the women are raised to be the bastions of good grammar, whereas the young male children are perhaps allowed more leeway because women are thought to be the early and most influential educators of each subsequent generation. Therefore correct grammar is more important to their role in the family.

Just a random theory.

It is an example of a copulative disjunctive, which sounds really kinky. It means the same grammatical structure as 'C'est moi!' in French: subject - 'being/becoming' verb - complement. Such verbs don't have an object, they should have a nominative complement. When this is in the form of a pronoun, as is very usual in using the first person of the verb, the disjunctive (me/us) is preferred: 'It is I' or (impersonal) 'it was we who ...' sound a bit implausible, no? Especially "It is I" when answering the phone, for example. But there are times when "It is I" is okay, as in "It is I who have to shoulder the burden".

Second person: you can't tell, as all forms go "you".

Third person: 'That's him/her/them', because 'that' is impersonal, and wants a disjunctive complement, which in English looks like the accusative/object form. In French it would be 'lui/elle/eux'. "C'est lui qui doit ..." and such is the French attention to their grammar, so sadly badly taught in England, or not at all, that I would put "Ce sont eux qui doivent ...".

Back to the point: when people ask for me on the phone I say (if indeed it is me) "that's me", and if they grumble about my grammar I say I am using the disjunctive pronoun "me" because it is appropriate in a short statement, not followed by a relative clause, and if they don't like it they must put up with it.
That usually puts their gas on a peep, as we say in Scotland, and has them flocking to bookshops seeking works on English grammar for their edification.

There has been an ongoing theme on this thread of people using the grammar of another language to prove their case in English. A general question for everyone: Is that really a valid tactic? Why or why not?

In Spanish, "soy yo" does not mean "I am me." It means "I am I." The translation for "I am me" is "soy mi," which is grammatically incorrect under Spanish grammar.

A bit off topic, but never mind. The literal translation of 'soy yo' may well be 'I am I', but that is meaningless in English and an idiomatic translation would be something more like 'it's me'. From various songs, with my efforts at translation:

Soy yo quien mira la lluvia - It's me who's looking at the rain / I'm the one looking at the rain
Alguien te amó y alguien soy yo - Someone loved you and that someone is me.
Y esta soy yo - And this is me
Soy yo, te lo digo a ti. - It's me, I'm telling you

You said: "You call “He ain’t happy” colloquial American English, to which a Londoner might reply “No, it ain’t”, well, not exclusively, at least. It seems to have developed from “an’t”, of which there are three examples in Congreve’s Love for Love (1695), my favourite being “Sea-calf! I an't calf enough to lick your chalk'd face, you cheese-curd, you.”. There are several examples of the use of “ain’t” in Dickens, and for a while it was also part of British upper class cant. In modern London dialect “ain’t” is often used in double negatives –“I ain’t never seen him”, “It ain’t none of your business”. In popular culture there was the 1970s British TV series “It ain’t half hot, Mum”, and more up to date, we have “I ain’t bovvered” (Lauren, Catherine Tait Show). While I totally agree with you about the “my variety of English is better than yours” way of thinking, which of course is linguistic nonsense, I would hate to see British English denied its claim to this particular and important corner of the language."

I suppose any serious diachronic lexicon would show that its many usages have developed independently, although I agree that by all accounts it likely developed first in England as a variation of "I am not." Your point about part of the word's originating in England (that is, orthographically) is well-received and well-made, and informative: its history deserves to be shared rather than expurgated. :)

Next you say: "It’s true that English has no academy, a fact I rejoice in, but you seem to be suggesting that for that reason descriptivism “takes home the prize” . But I’m afraid I don’t see any necessary connection between the two. Prescriptivism and descriptivism are two different ways of looking at language, and the lack of an academy didn’t stop prescriptivism ruling the roost in English grammar on both sides of the Atlantic for some two hundred years. Nor does the existence of an academy rule out a descriptive approach: the three volume Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, is published under the auspices of none other than the Real Academia Española (R.A.E), often seen as the guardians of prescriptivism in Spain."

Let's start with the fact that English is taught, the fact that any of its patterns are sometimes presumed "correct" or "incorrect," and additionally, with the fact that English is frequently taught as having grammatically justified rules and as conforming to norms. Prior to making my point, actually, I'd like first to erase your adjective necessary in "necessary connection," since I did not argue deductively and since that would otherwise misrepresent my position. Also, I'd like to point out that I didn't say: "schools, pedagogues, and self-appointed grammarians haven't prescribed," (perfect aspect). Rather, I said that because English has no language academy at present, it follows that lexicography reports native English usage without reference to prescriptive grammar(s); just as it follows that descriptivism (grammar) conforms to conventional standards rather than to any particular set of rules proposed by any particular self-appointed grammarian. With English's being made up of so many different languages and its being influenced by so many different, often conflicting grammars, I fail to see a more sensible or ethical grammar than one that reports standard English as it is used conventionally.

If English is to be taught so that learners speak and write it in a standard way, then [describing] and reporting it as it is used conventionally and in its standard ways is logically truer to those conventions and standards than reducing it to a set of given prescriptions: the conventions and standards represent much of the language as it is and has always been used; whereas, excluding pedagogical and cultural traditions, no other approach structures or has structured its conventions or standards consistently. Therefore, descriptivism not only serves as a more consistent approach to inform and justify preferred usage throughout the English language, but better communicates its conventions and standards.

In short, when people claim such things as "it IS 'this is she' and NOT 'this is her'," they do so correctly only if they appeal to any particular grammar. However, if they want to report actual standard English in either convention, their claim is false. What's more, conforming to Latin influences in grammar doesn't explain to inquiring people that any number of pertinent variations exist, and that each can be justified in different ways. A descriptive approach (as seen in lexicography) does.

"Ellipsis, gerunds and present participles – some modern grammarians are dropping the distinction between gerunds and present participles, and in EFL teaching we often refer to both as –ing forms, but seeing you mentioned them, there is no way I can see “Speaking” in your “Hi Scott” example being an ellipsis of a gerund phrase (at least not in the way gerund is understood in English grammar, i.e. as having a nominal function)."

That's easy. First, I was responding to a fellow who had tried to impose the notion onto his interlocutor that speaking had to be a noun and used in its most literal sense. I pointed out that it could well be used as a finite or non-finite present participle or a gerund as seen in a verb pattern (versus as a grammatical subject, the meaning and function of which I exemplified for contrast and which would be clear through contextualization). Second, it's not that hard to omit and simultaneously imply a verb pattern where speaking could be a gerund. "Is Scott there?" "yes (I'm), speaking," present continuous. "Is Scott there," "(by way of) speaking." :) Both of these constitute elliptical structures, the first of which is a main clause, and the second of which is a prepositional phrase. Now, of course, I'm happy to admit that nearly no one would answer a phone and imply "by way of" so as to justify the gerund. My point was that if the fellow some 1000 posts ago wanted to make people feel stupid, then all kinds of linguistic gymnastics could be exercised if to shame other people. Still, "this is she" versus "this is her" are both very well explained with elliptical clauses.

As you rightly explain about ellipsis, yes what is implied is usually so obvious that it merits being left out; whereas, leaving too much out would leave a listener to wonder. However examples like, "Where is he going later, Bill?" "To dance" (vs, "he is going to dance") instead of "Where is he going later, Bill" "dance" (where, through pragmatic knowledge on the part of the listener, "dance" refers to teaching lessons as an instructor and therefore: "to my Monday night dance lesson" instead of as it would most likely be wrongly interpreted through even the slightest remove.--I concede that this does not justify entire compound-complex sentences's being reduced to mere -ing words on a regular basis, since that would of course be ludicrous except in some form of, say, sentential phone scrabble. :-P

If the latter response is meant for me, there's a linguistic concept called "referential indexicality," which broadly refers to meaning that is context-dependent, that you might like to look into. A gerund's meaning can change according to context, such as in these two examples: "I usually end up speaking to my sister when I get bored" (where speaking is not thought of as speech), and "We know little about the timing of language's emergence in our species. Unlike writing, speaking leaves no material trace, making it archaeologically invisible" (where speaking is not thought of as talking trivially).

Noscitur a sociis comes to mind...