Compared with many other languages, English has very little use for cases. You can rarely find the accusative case in pronouns such as whom, me or him. Because of its rarity and the lack of understanding on how to use them, they have become a pedant’s delight, and a prime target for mistaken corrections. It is all too common for people to say ‘my friend and I’ rather than ‘my friend and me’ in any circumstance without thinking of the case. The easiest way to tell which firm if the pronoun to use is to remove the other person. I was recently corrected when I said ‘it was up to my father and me’ and told it should be ‘it was up to my father and I’. If we took out ‘my father’ it is clear that ‘me’ is the right pronoun. Even in cases where ‘I’ is correct, ‘me’ can be used perfectly well idiomatically, such as ‘it’s me’ rather than the pompous sounding ‘it is I’. Tolerate, don’t berate.
