This is such a common complaint that I’m only going to offer a
single example of it, and leave it up to you whether you want to
waste part of your life looking up other examples. From the
BBC’s idiotic list of “Americanisms”: 16. “I’m good” for “I’m
well”. That’ll do for a start. There is nothing wrong with “I’m
good”. And yet, this is the sort of grammatical myth that not
merely persists, but pervades. One of my best friends in college
ragged on me for it. One of my current friends (an English
teacher no less) subtly corrects me for it regularly. There are
a few reasons why people might think that I’m good is incorrect.
The most prominent, the one I’m often given as justification, is
that good is an adjective and well an adverb. That’s all well
and good, but am is a conjugated form of to be. To be is a
linking verb here, which means that it takes a predicative
adjective, not an adverb. We say things like I’m hungry, not I’m
hungrily. An adjective is what you need here, without question.
Of course, well isn’t