"I have oft admitted that I am a pedantic old curmudgeon and as such I reserve the right to express my opinions."

No one is suggesting you don't have the right to express your opinions.

However, your recent remark still amounts to petty snobbery over language differences.

"The former is perfectly good english. The latter is not, and is, I suspect, something of an Americanism."

Ah yes, the usual fall-back position of all grammar pedants: when the facts fail you, resort to petty snobbery.

We've been coining "-age" words in English pretty well since words bearing that suffix came into the language (ha!) courtesy of Norman French.

I suspect we'll still be cheerfully coining new "-age" words when most of us here today are either in our dotage (ha ha!) or gone.

Gosh, I would have thought this old argument had been flogged to death long ago. We say "it's me"; end of story.

Oh, and perhaps it would help if we tried to avoid terms like "nominative" when discussing English. Not one English noun possesses a nominative form.

The only five words in modern English that can generally considered "true nominatives" are I, he, she, we and they.

“'I am home.' Does 'home' function here as a noun or an adverb?"

Does it matter?

Some interesting comments spanning almost seven years. The etymology of "o'clock" is intriguing but here's the reality: the "o'" in "o'clock" no longer really stands for anything in itself. The whole expression "o'clock" survives as an idiom and for indicating time.

Or maybe not. For, as "Canada Goose" notes, the expression does appear to be falling more and more out of use.

Surely the reason for this fairly humble mistake is obvious? It's pronunciation.

It is based entirely on the phonetic proximity of the "m" in "home" with the "n" in "in".

Hardly catastrophic.

Such substitution exercises are silly. They do not account for particular idioms and constructions like "try and". It isn't possible to use it in the past tense? So what? All this proves is that English apparently won't permit "tried and". It doesn't prove "try and" is "wrong".

Tell you what, try and (ha ha!) substitute "have" for "had" in the following:

"You had better try harder next time."

Can't do it, can ya?

"This is very interesting! keep it up"

I think you are just about three years too late, my friend.

In the spoken language, "Standard English" is a useful fiction; in the written language, it's a useful semi-fiction.

If most English speakers spoke like a BBC announcer, you might have a case for some sort of "standard". But of course, they don't. And if there's a "Standard English" for the written language, why do Australians, Canadians and Britons insist on "colour" when most English speakers spell it "color"?

Some standard.