Watching the final episode of the BBC mini-series A Very British Scandal last night I was struck by the Duke of Argyll saying “This battle between you and I …”. It would have been highly unlikely for a man of his upbringing and social class to have produced this linguistic shibboleth, particularly at this time in the history of English. So why would the script writers have put it in, I wonder?
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I, too, heard it and shuddered, Ingrid! But then I wondered: “Could it have been a case of a toff studiously trying to avoid the ‘you and me’ form used by the (more shudders) plebs?”
My comment is now the top review at the IMDb page of the series. 😊