Ever since I can remember my dad has always been keen to correct my mom’s unfortunate “Utah” grammar. Well, today I was doing a little reading on the internet and stumbled across some information my mom could have used a long time ago.
According to Grammar Girl at grammar.quickanddirtytips.com it is perfectly acceptable respond “I’m good,” to the question “how are you?” In fact, it might be more appropriate to say “I’m good” rather than “I’m well.”
Since you’re not likely to want to read the whole article I’ll give you the gist of it right here. The classic argument goes: well is an adverb, while good is an adjective. Adverbs modify verbs and adjectives modify nouns. Since am (to be) is a verb it would seem that it must be modified with an adverb and could not be correctly modified with an adjective.
Grammar Girl points out that there are different kinds of verbs: action verbs and linking verbs. Action verbs are words like run, jump, walk, talk, etc. Adverbs modify these verbs. Here’s an example: Sultan runs well, or Max jumps well. Linking verbs on the other hand, are used to link other words together. Examples of these are seem, to be, look, etc.
The difficult part is that some verbs can be both action verbs and linking verbs. Grammer Girl uses the example of feel. In the sentence He feels bad, feel is acting as a linking verb. (she says that you can replace the verb with to be you can see if it’s a linking verb) In the sentence He feels badly, feel is acting as a action verb.
Now here’s the kicker. Adjectives are commonly and correctly used after linking verbs. In such a case the adjective is referred to as a predicate adjective which refers back to the noun before the linking verb. In the sentence He feels bad, bad is the predicate adjective referring back to describe He.
Using this information on grammar we can see that it is grammatically correct to say “I am good.”
Another confusing point is that well can be both an adverb and a predicate adjective. Grammar Girl says that historically, well is used as a predicate adjective to refer to one’s health. For example if you’re asking about how Max is--he’s been sick for the past few days--it would be appropriate to say “he is well” Conversely, it wouldn’t be as appropriate for me to say “he is good” in this instance.
The lesson I take from this is that when referring to health,
well is most appropriate and when referring to general state of being the best choice would actually be good. So Mom, all I can say is that next time someone give you a hard time for saying "I’m good", tell them that Grammar Girl has your back--at all times. And yes, Max has been quite ill. We hope that he gets WELL soon.
