@Sbee - I know it's not what you asked, but the more I think about it, the less reason I see to mention either Gregg or me; the other person knows whose child is involved. If we introduce our daughter to somebody I don't think we usually say, "This is Gregg's and my daughter", but either "This is our daughter" or "This is my daughter". Secondly, I think we'd be more likely to say "my son" or "my daughter" than "my child", wouldn't we? Or as I said before, simply use their name:

"I so appreciate you taking Ben / my son / our son to school today".

Or for the more formally minded:

"I so appreciate your taking Ben / my son / our son to school today".

@Dyske - OK, but I think Gregg's child should come first in that case to make clear what "mine" is referring to:

"I so appreciate you Gregg’s child and mine to school today.”

In fact, it's not very clear from the original whether we are talking about one or two children. If it is one, and the speaker still wants to mention both themself and Gregg, then I think "Gregg's and my child" would be more natural than "My and Gregg's child". And if there are two - I would prefer "Gregg's and my children", I think.

No. "Mine" is only used on its own, not before a noun:

“I so appreciate you taking my and Gregg’s child to school today.” - but I would suggest "our child" or the kid's name would be more natural than "my and Gregg's child"?

Is this your child? That's mine over there.
This is my child. Is that yours over there?

@Traduttore and Bill S - I'm sure you're right.It's just that for somebody of my generation brought up knowing only the think version, and having the logic of that deeply engrained in us, it's difficult to see an alternative logic. I do realise it was around before Judas Priest, but its use before then seems pretty marginal, as this graph shows:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=got+another+think+coming%2Cyou+got+another+thing+coming&year_start=1880&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3

When I asked one of my younger teacher colleagues (30-ish) about this, he told me he had never heard of the "think" version, and no doubt many people not having the "think" baggage I have, are quite able to interpret the "thing" version their own way. But for us old fogeys, its a bit more difficult.

I'm certainly not in the "right and wrong" game, but I think I'll stick with the one I'm used to.

Hi again. Oxford Dictionaries put "et" first, so I'm not sure know where you get the idea it's thought of as uneducated - verb (past ate /ɛt, eɪt/), and I would have thought it to be pretty standard Oxford - (gasps to himself - how dare he call me uneducated!) :)

As regards age, this is from a piece about a British Library survey on pronunciation - 'Linguists say pronunciation is constantly evolving. Young British people are more likely to call the eighth letter of the alphabet “haitch,” rather than “aitch,” and pronounce the past tense of “to eat” as “ate” instead of the old-fashioned “et.” '. - I'm old-fashioned, apparently.

http://dawn.com/2010/10/28/ate-or-et-british-library-mulls-pronunciation/

And this is from the BBC - "Indeed the younger you are, the more likely you are to make says rhyme with lays rather than fez, ate rhyme with late rather than bet and to add a whole new syllable to mischievous, turning it in to miss-CHEEVY-us rather than MISS-chiv-us."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11642588

You're right about Fielding and spelling. These are from Tom Jones (at Gutenberg) :

"While Mr Wilks, therefore, was thundering out, "Where are the carpenters to walk on before King Pyrrhus?" that monarch very quietly eat his mutton, and the audience, however impatient, were obliged to entertain themselves with music in his absence."

"The squire was so delighted with this conduct of his daughter, that he scarce eat any dinner, and spent almost his whole time in watching opportunities of conveying signs of his approbation by winks and nods to his sister; who was not at first altogether so pleased with what she saw as was her brother."

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6593/pg6593.html

And it wasn't only Fielding; these are from Pepy's Diary for 1660:

"so Mr. Moore and I and another gentleman went out and drank a cup of ale together in the new market, and there I eat some bread and cheese for my dinner. "

"My father and I went down to his kitchen, and there we eat and drank, and about 9 o'clock I went away homewards"

Pepys also often uses non-stressed did in affirmative sentences: "This morning Mr. Shepley and I did eat our breakfast at Mrs. Harper's"

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4125/4125-h/4125-h.htm

A propos of nothing and one for British contributors. I think this is more about age than accent - but do you pronounce "ate" to rhyme with "bet" or "late"? Skeeter? Hairy?

@Skeeter Lewis - re half-tones - there's a scene in an episode of "Keeping Up Appearances", when Hyacinth says to the unfortunate Richard - "I hope you're not going to spoil the day with lower-middle class humour, dear." We must have one of the most nuanced class systems in the world, although it's rapidly changing, thank God. And we haven't even got on to the topic of "U" and "Non-U", those words forbidden to me when I was young such as "toilet, serviette, pardon" and "lounge".

Up until the 70s, BBC English more or less meant RP, and so for many people of my generation the two expressions are nearly synonymous. Here's David Crystal in "The Stories of English" - "By then (1926), of course, it (RP) had been further institutionalised by being adopted by the BBC" (p 470).

I don't know the background to the Ed Stourton story. He may no longer be at the "Today" programme, but he's still at the BBC, as far a I know. Are you suggesting he was replaced because he was too posh? And here's the opposite side of the coin - "Even in 1980, listeners to Radio 4 were expressing concern over the Scottish accent of the presenter Susan Rae". (ibid., p 474)

RP is changing, just like the BBC is changing, and what Crystal calls general or mainstream RP is certainly more relaxed than it used to be. Crystal points out that many with a mainstream RP accent find posher forms "affected". In other words, RP is neither static nor monolithic.

But its use is decreasing. A recent phenomenon is how many children of RP-speaking parents adopt a more general accent, like Estuary, a prime example being Jamie Oliver. Oliver speaks, I would say, typical Estuary, although his accent is sometimes classed as Mockney. But I heard his parents and his sister on his show once, and they're pure RP.

@Skeeter Lewis. I would say you're being a wee bit restrictive there. I certainly didn't go to Oxbridge, for example, although I did go to a public school. Public schools are certainly the bastion of RP, but not just the major ones. Old Etonians and Harrovians, for example, often tend more to URP than simple RP. Oxford Dictionaries Online defines RP as - "the standard form of British English pronunciation, based on educated speech in southern England, widely accepted as a standard elsewhere.". I would qualify that by saying that it's the standard middle-class accent of the South-east. RP is largely what we teach foreign students, and we certainly don't teach them an Oxford drawl.

In Scotland, however, it is seen as English, although this is not strictly true, and I know people who went to one or two Scottish public schools who have just as posh accents as those who have been to English ones. And I've heard people from Dublin with much posher voices than mine, and I've no doubt that you can find them in Wales as well, but it is certainly more restricted in those countries. What used to piss me off, was that if you are the Laird of Aucheltymuchelty (sic), or the Chieftain of Clan MacSporran or whatever, you can have the plummiest old Etonian accent you like, and nobody will accuse you of being English. But for a normal Joe Bloggs like me, there was the constant question, "And which part of England are you from?", or the blunter, "You're no Scottish!" (said with a glottal stop).

A bit late perhaps, but I'm with pain, porsche and Hamlet on this one, in that the expression is often heard with "better", or is about choice - Law for Dummies asks, "Would you rather be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond", for example, would you prefer to be a partner in a small local practice, or an assistant in a large multinational law firm. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.