You might know the song called The Way I Are by Timberland featuring Keri Hilson. I am very confused here. How does The Way I Are make sense?
3 Answers
I am not familiar with the song, but that title is bad grammar.
I is singular. Are would go with a plural subject. Perhaps the songwriter is hinting at having multiple personalities? Perhaps they wanted to do some other kind of word play or indicate that "they way he is" is broken, but there is no way to defend that title as grammatically correct!
The grammatically correct version would be "The way I am."
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So, this is not something that we would like to use in our daily conversations?– tugberkCommented Jun 14, 2011 at 11:01
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@nohat: That's sort of correct, except that you can be both singular or plural. I was giving the general rule not the exceptions. In this case the suggested phrase is not an exception and just plain wrong.– CalebCommented Jun 14, 2011 at 20:41
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@Caleb my point is just that the verb be has the most complicated conjugation in English. By your logic, “the way I is” might be grammatical because is is for singular subjects and I is singular.– nohatCommented Jun 14, 2011 at 20:45
Pop songs, and most forms of poetry, bend, break and totally ignore the rules of "proper grammar". See poetic license.
So yes, it doesn't match the rules, but that doesn't mean the rules are wrong --- just that they've been ignored.
In the song's lyrics this mistake was made on purpose to rhyme it with another line.
Baby if you strip, you could get a tip
'Cause I like you just the way you are
I'm about to strip and I want it quick
Can you handle me the way I are?
The title probably just inherited it from the lyrics. Also there's one more such mistake in the text, in the line It don't matter 'cause I'm the one that loves you best. It should be it doesn't — again, probably was made to fit the line into the song.
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2Reading the lines you have quoted, I think it is more than just rhyming: it is a deliberate catachresis to bring out the chiasmus: "I ... you the way you are" ... "You ... me the way I are". Commented Jun 14, 2011 at 11:31
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2And the "don't matter" is an utterly different case. "the way I are" is not grammatical in the sense that it is something that no native English speaker (of any variety of English, AFAIK) would say. "It don't matter", on the other hand is something that many speakers of many varieties of English often say: it is not contrary to English grammar, just contrary to certain arbitrary varieties which have been deemed proper. Commented Jun 14, 2011 at 11:34
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I agree with @ColinFine but the annoying thing is that the song would have worked with correct grammar! Commented Jul 28, 2022 at 2:33
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1Or to paraphrase your comment, @LesterCheung, the song would have worked if the writer had chosen not to write it in a version of English which they presumably found natural in the context, but in some other version of English which somebody has arbitrarily decided is "corrent gerammar". To which my answer is "Why on earth should they?" Commented Jul 28, 2022 at 18:36
amshould come afterI, s/he shouldn't be here in the fist place. My comment is useless here because @Kosmonaut already took the sentence out from the question. This is the one thing I am not happy with stackexchange.