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Re-reading Whispers Underground, on page 3 Peter thinks " ... including me and Abigail. Or, as Nightingale insists it should be, Abigail and I."
Except "me and Abigail" is actually correct. Boo, Nightingale, for not explaining the rule. The easiest way of figuring it out is, if you strip out the other people, should it be "me" or "I"? So, since "including I" would be wrong, it should be "including me."
Now, the reason that Nightingale really should have explained this (and why I suspect this shows he is a terrible language teacher) is that he's teaching Peter Latin, right? Whenever one is teaching a foreign language, it REALLY REALLY HELPS to learn a big more ENGLISH grammar at the same time--not just "what's right" but "why is it right" because if you can figure out the grammar patterns and structure in your own language, it's a lot easier to figure out the grammar patterns and structure in a different language. I don't think it matters to everyday usage whether Peter uses the right or wrong pronoun in situations like this--everybody's going to know what he means, which is the main point of communicating, after all. But it might matter to how easy it is for him to figure out the Latin he's getting his head stuffed with. So insisting on the "correct" form is just snobbishness, not genuine language teaching.
I mean, I'm not blaming him for being a bad teacher! He never got any training, and languages are hard to teach as well as to learn! But while nobody but him could teach the magic stuff, they might have been better off hiring a language tutor or something for the Latin.
Except "me and Abigail" is actually correct. Boo, Nightingale, for not explaining the rule. The easiest way of figuring it out is, if you strip out the other people, should it be "me" or "I"? So, since "including I" would be wrong, it should be "including me."
Now, the reason that Nightingale really should have explained this (and why I suspect this shows he is a terrible language teacher) is that he's teaching Peter Latin, right? Whenever one is teaching a foreign language, it REALLY REALLY HELPS to learn a big more ENGLISH grammar at the same time--not just "what's right" but "why is it right" because if you can figure out the grammar patterns and structure in your own language, it's a lot easier to figure out the grammar patterns and structure in a different language. I don't think it matters to everyday usage whether Peter uses the right or wrong pronoun in situations like this--everybody's going to know what he means, which is the main point of communicating, after all. But it might matter to how easy it is for him to figure out the Latin he's getting his head stuffed with. So insisting on the "correct" form is just snobbishness, not genuine language teaching.
I mean, I'm not blaming him for being a bad teacher! He never got any training, and languages are hard to teach as well as to learn! But while nobody but him could teach the magic stuff, they might have been better off hiring a language tutor or something for the Latin.
