The Archers - What’s your poison? Alice is legless, the fish are lifeless and Pip is clueless (Discussion #85)

[DadDadDad]

Even if you don't have a leg(?), a life or a clue, Welcome to the first ever 85th Archers thread!

Wild speculation and sensible questions always welcome - especially any newcomers.

A little game for the weekend, inspired by Timetogetup0630 and Gruach on the last thread:

Invent an explanation for how your username was the inspiration for an Archers storyline, character, etc - be creative!

My username is telling the story of Toby, Adam and Ian, although it probably needs some punctuation: Dad! Dad/Dad?

dairyfarmerswife - bit too easy for you, but as professional country folk maybe you could judge the winner?

Credit to MrsGrindah for the clever thread title

TASWAMA

As usual, all the women have been turned into idiots.

With Emma, WYSIWYG. If she didn't like you, you'd know about it. Nicola would be pleasant to your face and stab you in the back. And also get her nasty sexist husband to come and tell you off.

I wish that Emma and many of her acquaintances would stop saying 'Me and...'

It's how people speak.

"Me and Ed...", "Me and Fallon..." isn't. It is grammatically wrong. Nobody would say "Me is going to ..." would they?

or should that be "Me am going"?

Yep. How very dare people on the Archers be not particularly well educated. Well, apart from the people we are all supposed to laugh at anyway. Obviously all the important characters should have gone to Uppingham..........

It's only the lower orders who say it. It makes me wince.
I think that Emma went to the same school as Kate, Borchester Green, although Kate went to boarding school first.

I don't hear it much IRL.

Sorry, I hear it a lot in RL. ( hanging out with the low life)

Mike people say “me and Ed” etc IRL all the time. It’s rife. You must just be hanging around in very eloquent circles.

Of course the other thing that people often say is “Nic and myself” which makes my ears bleed. Over-correction by people who vaguely remember being taught that “me and Nic are going to the cinema” and are scared of “come for a cup of tea with Nic and me”. William would definitely be a “myself” merchant.

On Emma, Nic and housing- what is the status of the cottage that Will and Nic live in? It was Will and Emma’s first marital home, which they called “Casa Nueva” when they came back from honeymoon in Mexico, but had Will bought it or was it tied to his job as gamekeeper? I know that Will and Nic renamed it to Greenwood Cottage or some such, and then Will then bought No 1 the Green with the inheritance that he got but Ed didn’t, but am just wondering if Will and Nic actually are owner-occupiers?

And of course some part of Emma must recognise that she HAD a family home of her own in “Casa Nueva” and chose to give that up when she left Will for Ed.

The SWs are NOT misogynist they just want to DRAMATISE everything so that no one can have a quiet life at the moment. I'm team Nick she's tries to make things pleasant and the SWs won't let her.

Agree that creepy Will seems to have a very bad memory about the unfair bequest he had.

If you, like me, are the sort of mother who corrects her children every time they say "me and...." , at what age can I expect them to start remembering?

Flexibility is the name of the game IMO and E . i wouldn't take any notice . Except if they started effing and blinding then I would say "We try not to say that here" The problem being dh is a journalist and works in environments where it is common to eff and blind. So he wasn't a good example!

Myself and yourself will have to agree to disagree.
Casa Nueva is tied to the job, and has been renamed Greenwood Cottage.

Well I'm sure the winners of the competition were worthy enough but I do wonder if the judge did quite as good a job as she thinks? I for one must disagree. I expect I was placed fourth with no honourable mention but that simply isn't good enough.
Sniff

I was brought up to put the other person's name first as it sounds better. 'Ed and I are going' Instead of 'I and Ed are going'.

I mean... compared to telly soaps the dramatisation is more real and less dramatic iyswim. People seem to get the huff realistically and if it were on telly Matt’s moving down or Freddie’s drug deals would have gotten completely out of hand probably involving some kind of mafia.

Lynda You're not COMPLAINING are you ?? Tut Tut, that'll be £3 in the Lent collection please

Puremince - when they can understand the difference between subject and object. They will then be able to work out from first principles which is the grammatically correct usage and won't have to 'remember'. Although, of course, it will become instinctive. If, however, they never grasp this point, they may well find themselves having their documents corrected as adults, by their peers, and still wondering why.

Peartree - I'm not entirely convinced. Most children and adults know instinctively the difference between subject and object, which is why (in most dialects) they know to say "I like Sarah" and "Sarah likes me". They don't need to be taught it - native speakers internalise the rules through hearing other native speakers repeatedly using them.

It is just the peculiar of case of coordinating two nouns into the subject when one is the first person that causes problems for adults, so in speech "Me and Sarah will ... " is common because "I and Sarah..." sounds wrong and "Sarah and I..." unnaturally formal. Children do it because that's what they hear.

I believe the use of "me" in this kind of subject is recognised as grammatical by some linguists in informal spoken English, but I need to check that.

I am ridiculously pleased to have received, what I choose to interpret as, an honourable mention! Thank you SO MUCH, DFW!😁

Nic is jealous of Emma because she has a position in the community and several brain cells to rub together.

Nic was Emma’s best ally in the run-up to the election, and Emma probably wouldn’t have had a chance without her help (and that of Jim). She’s far too hot-headed to have come up with a strategy herself - wasn’t it Nic’s idea that she talk to the local Mums?

Emma and Ed have to put up with Nic and Will constantly rubbing their noses in it that they have slightly more money.

I just don’t believe that to be true. If anything, Nic bends over backwards to stop any of that kind of talk. Last week’s outburst was uncharacteristic but Jolene’s telling off, combined with Will’s egging-on, is what brought it about. Emma does nothing for Nic, despite Nic’s efforts to play happy families. Poor Nic realised that Emma couldn’t care less about her. I’m sad for her.

Ps. Haven’t heard tonight.

But once you understand the rule, you can work out what you should be writing/saying even if it sounds, as you say, unnaturally formal. 'Sarah and I went to the zoo yesterday,' sounds awkward, although correct, but 'We went to the zoo yesterday' comes naturally. And I am not talking about 'informal spoken English', in which all sorts of stuff can happen, including West Indian "I said to I', but written English, where syntactic relativism is less welcome. Civil servants, for example can expect their documents to be corrected when they can't observe a grammatical rule.

I think the "me and Ed', "me and Susan' etc in TA (to get back on track) is a kind of 'realism code' pace Barthes - it's to communicate the sense of a world in which there is a class division. And this thread gets quite excited when those codes are not observed e.g. Lily Pargetter saying 'dessert' rather than 'pudding'. That occupied a fair old bit of real estate...(wink)

Why has none of you pedants mentioned ‚you and l‘ after a preposition? Now that really makes me grit my teeth. I‘ve even heard it from people older than me and they must have had grammar lessons in school. Example: Josh is meeting Nancy and l at the village green. I hear it a lot.

And TA? I‘m glad Nic got her books. At least that bit was realistic. She‘s done two bad things at work in the last week, Jolene couldn‘t not fire her. I assume she andKenton had a chat and she knows about not giving Alice the booze she‘d bought. The whole scene onFriday with Nic shouting like a fish wife wasn‘t that realistic, but what is realistic that it‘ll be Emma that gets the blame, esp from Will and Nic. And the bastard Will is probably quietly pleased the little woman hasn‘t got her job any more.