Some say AHNT and some say ANT.

There you have it.

Next question, please.

"The accent above the last IS needed, without it the e would not be pronounced in English."

This is the epitome* of nonsense. Of course the "e" at the end is pronounced, with or without an accent. You're confusing the written representation of the language with the spoken language itself.

* So, should this be pronounced "epi-toem"?

"'Let us you and I' is incorrect."

Yes indeed.

Grammatical pedantry is so much more important to the English language than something as inconsequential as the evocative lyricism of T.S. Eliot's epic poem.

It's "Maple Leafs." Period. End of discussion.*

As for:

"Everyone knows there is no such thing as 'Canadien Soldiers'."

I suggest you visit this site for an education, mon ami:

www.r22er.com

* Now if they could just start actually winning a few games...

Oops! Forgot to add:

Both constructions are essentially idioms and interchangeable when used in the (conditional) meaning of "provided that."

But when we use "as long as" for comparison, it's not really the same expression. It is simply the comparative construction "as... as":

as long as
as big as
as easy as
as tall as
as difficult as

As John and AO indicated, the two constructions are essentially "co-existing variants" and mean the same thing.

My sense is that "as long as" is predominant but "so long as" continues to be used in various dialects. This is just a gut feel on my part however.

"To those claiming that 'it is I' or 'this is I' is correct: We say 'I AM this,' not 'I IS this.' How do you explain or justify the subject pronoun 'I' not agreeing with the verb?"

"That's a good question, Lia. How is a 1st person pronoun (I) made to agree with a verb form (is) in the 3rd person -- as in 'That's I', which it would be 'I is that' in reverse? Anyone?"

This question is a red herring; the answer has nothing to do with the "it is I/it's me" argument.

It's nothing more complicated than this: the verb agrees with its subject. Reverse the phrase and your subject changes from third to first person, so the verb changes too.

If the subject is "that" then "be" must be third person singular ("is"). If the subject is "I" then "be" must be first person singular ("am").

Well, the verb "tabler" does exist in French but, in general terms, you are right.

There are two aspects of English that allow this ease in "function-switching":

1. The minimal inflection of most English verbs. To make a word usually used as a noun into a verb requires no great modification beyond the addition of "-(e)s", "-(e)d" or "-ing" in some circumstances. In French, one must first assign the word to one of the three possible conjugations and then go from there with the appropriate endings (this is fairly common though).

2. Noun to adjective function-switching is a common Germanic trait - we see it in German with those massive compound nouns, e.g, "Kontactlinseverträglichkeitstest"
but in fact we have the same thing in English except that we place spaces between the words in writing. If we did not, the English equivalent of the long German noun above would be just as endless: "contactlenscompatibilitytest".

(Yes, I know, some glitch is inserting a carriage return in that German word; "test" should not be separated from the rest of the word. Beats me!)

"James,

'Deidre, Michelle and I presented to the board.' is correct.

Remove Deidre and Michelle from the sentence and see what you are left with.

You would not say, 'Me presented to the board.'"

You're right, you would not.

However, your reasoning is flawed. Removing "Deidre and Michelle" from the sentence doesn't show that "me" is "incorrect"; it simply demonstrates that "me" cannot be used as the subject on its own.

This is actually a poor example. The subject matter of "Deidre, Michelle and I presented to the board" indicates the use of "Institutional English" (or, if you prefer, so-called "Standard English") rather than a more colloquial dialect. That is to say, someone who is presenting something to a board is probably unlikely to employ "Deidre, Michelle and me presented" even if their natural dialectical inclination is to do so.

A more pertinent example to illustrate what is wrong with your approach here would be:

"Jim and me went to the store"

This construction is perfectly common in English and has been for many centuries, despite attempts to "prove" it is "incorrect."

Now you would show this to be "wrong" through the expedient of removing "Jim and" leaving "me went to the store" - a statement no one would utter (well, a toddler might, but that's of no bearing here).

However, that's precisely the point. If you ask anyone who says "Jim and me went to the store" to take out "Jim" and say it again, they will automatically say "I went to the store." That means they have an internal grammatical rule in their dialect that will not permit "me" to be used as a stand-alone subject.

This is actually fairly grammatically complex.

By the way, you always have to be careful with these little rearrangement exercises. For example, take "aren't I?" - why is this considered "correct" but we can't say "I aren't"?

The subjunctive is indeed incorporated into this expression. However, I'd suggest you treat this as a particular idiom along the lines of "so to speak."