Me, Myself & I; your thoughts.

[Easy_Rider]

I've noticed the increased use of the word "myself" in sentences such as;

Dave and myself went to...
or
Myself and George did...

It's not just here on RB but also on the TV and in work that I hear it, but those sentences are incorrect.

I'm not bashing the correct use of the word, but I am very interested to know why people use it in this way. Is it because "Dave and I" sounds to pompous and "Dave and me" sounds incorrect (which it is).

Your thoughts.

 

[Neil]

Me is ambivalent, myself is apathetic, and somehow I just can't seem to care ;-)

 

[one-eyed_jim]

I'm not bashing the correct use of the word, but I am very interested to know why people use it in this way. Is it because "Dave and I" sounds to pompous and "Dave and me" sounds incorrect (which it is).

I think that's a fair explanation. It's a shame that correctness is linked to pomposity, but there you are. When I was a kid, it seemed the worst faux pas one could commit was to be posh, and the easiest way not to be posh was to be ungrammatical.

You also sometimes hear an overcorrection where "I" becomes part of the object - "How dare you say that about Dave and I?".

 

[Easy_Rider]

I think that's a fair explanation. It's a shame that correctness is linked to pomposity, but there you are. When I was a kid, it seemed the worst faux pas one could commit was to be posh, and the easiest way not to be posh was to be ungrammatical.

I agree with you, it was also the same for me as a kid.
I've noticed the incorrect use of the word "myself" more in an otherwise grammatically correct sentence, it just seems odd.

I'm not trying to bash the correct use though. I quite often say "me and Dave..." knowing it's incorrect but it's just habit, but I'll never write or say "Dave and myself..."

 

[legrandefromage]

One, oneself and One does not care anymore.

One feels the world has gone to pot upon hearing the word 'moister' whence referring to a cake, on Radio 4.


His Graaande Pommpyness.

 

[Easy_Rider]

Seriously, i'm not bashing, just curious. I know i'm far from grammatically correct all the time and to be honest i'm not that bothered.

It is after all how English evolves, otherwise we'd still be saying thee and thou. What finally prompted me to ask though is after hearing a BBC reporter saying something along the lines of "Kate and myself managed to make the cake moister..."

 

[one-eyed_jim]

I just thought of an interesting example from a favourite poem of mine. "Fair Cloris in a Pigsty Lay" is a bawdy rhyme from the 1670s that includes the lines:

"Myself had tried to set him free
Rather than brought the news,"

The sense in modern English is something like:

"I would have tried to free him myself, instead of bringing you the news"

That's a bit of a tangent, I suppose, but it's interesting to see "myself" used in isolation like that as a personal pronoun.


http://books.google.fr/books?id=r5hhJue ... 22&f=false

 

[lewis1641]

I didn't realise that 'dave and myself' isn't correct. Good old comprehensive education

 

[dyna-ti]

We wouldnt know :?