Is it "No one will notice but you and me" or "no one will notice but you and I" ?
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1(You should be able to conclude from the answers at the linked question that you should say "... but you and me".)– HellionJan 30, 2015 at 18:01
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@Hellion: That's true, as is the converse ("You and I will notice, but no-one else will"). But so far as I'm concerned, although Fengyang's comment here is plain wrong, many otherwise perfectly competent speakers would be quite happy to use "you and me" as the subject. And many speakers who aren't as competent as they'd like to think they are would use "you and I" in OP's object context (mistakenly believing that "I" is always "more correct"). Personally I think the grammarians's concept of "correctness" here is a sterile debate - it's what people actually say that counts.– FumbleFingersJan 30, 2015 at 18:19
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@FumbleFingers, if it's what people actually say that counts, then our efforts to inform them are of the utmost import; the more we can get them to say what we think is correct, the more correct it becomes. ;-)– HellionJan 30, 2015 at 18:27
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1Please, FF. It is not a "grammarians concept". It does not come from grammarians. I am a grammarian and I can tell you authoritatively and officially that the concept of grammatical "correctness" is total bullshit, useful for racist and ethnic baiting, but for nothing else. Grammarians are not responsible for it.– John LawlerJan 30, 2015 at 18:27
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1(or shall I just fall into line with my daughter, who calls them grammar nazis?)– FumbleFingersJan 30, 2015 at 18:49
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2 Answers
This hinges on whether the word "but" is interpreted as a preposition or a conjunction.
If "but" were a conjunction, then the sentence is a shortening of:
No one will notice, but you and I will notice.
Consider the similar case of "He works harder than I." as a shortening of "He works harder than I work." Under this interpretation, "I" is preferable to "me".
On the other hand, if "but" were a preposition, then "you and me" is clearly an object. Perhaps this interpretation is more natural to most. The use of "but" as a preposition is widely accepted by dictionaries (see for instance wiktionary).
In light of this, I would personally prefer the construction "you and me" because it seems more modern and is less likely to attract attention. However, I would not consider either construction wrong. Use whichever is more appropriate for the context.
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No, this hinges on what people generally say. Anglophones – perhaps most of whom wouldn't dream of interpreting 'but' here as any particular part of speech. I'd personally use 'No one but you and I has turned up' but never 'No one but we ...'. Jan 31, 2015 at 0:17
These Google Ngrams seem to indicate that most people think that 'it' is
No one but us will ...
rather than
No one but we will ....
These Ngrams, for 'know but you and me'; 'know but you and I' might be interpreted as showing that
'No one will know but you and me'
is much preferred to
'No one will know but you and I'.
One could extrapolate further to the situation with OP's examples.
answered Jan 31, 2015 at 0:27
