JK Rowling pens a Harry Potter prequel / War of Roses/Holmes?Figg/Walpurga

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
>
> <rest of post snipped>
> > Miles, who still doesn't know about "it's me!" or "it's I!", though
> the latter sounds wrong
> 
> Carol responds:
> "It's I" (or "it is I," if you're going to be really formal) is
> technically correct but no one says it. Fowler's ("The New Fowler's
> Modern English Usage," third ed.) lists it as one of several instances
> "in which *me* is now tending to usurp the territory that logically
> belongs to the subject-pronoun *I.* . . . . *It's me* in an answer to
> the question *Who is it?* is now standard [and] in answer to the
> question *Who's there?" the natural answer is *Me* not *I.*"

Geoff:
It's interesting that in several languages, the verb "to be" takes a 
nominative and yet this "it's me" crops up. In French, which, IIRC, 
had no case structure it's "c'est moi".  Funnily enough, I don't know 
what the German situation is; although I speak the language, i don't 
recall ever wanting that phrase! Perhaps Miles can oblige on that 
point?

It has been a linguistic arguing point for many years. When I was at 
grammar school in the late 1950s, one of the English teachers was 
writing a series of English textbooks and at one point in it, he used 
"It's me" and was promptly jumped on by the publishers saying 
that this was wrong. So they set up a trial and asked various 
members of the publishing staff to come to the chief editor's office 
and knock. When asked "Who's there?', they were to reply without 
using their name. In every case, the person involved replied "It's me". 
My English teacher won his point that it was accepted usage and it 
went into the book.