Why have people started using reflexive pronouns so much?

[Flippetydip]

I seem to hear a lot recently of "what can I get for yourself?" or "could you send it to myself with a, b and c copied in".

You get something for yourself, I get something for you. I send something to myself, I send something to you.

Is this now considered acceptable English?

Invitation vs invite riles me. It's everywhere and it's wrong.

I have received an invitation.
I have been invited to...
I will invite Tom to...

"I want to scribble on every notice on the staff room board."

ah....even they are doing it!

When I did my post grad, my tutors told me to avoid using top line punctuation, because there was such a good chance that people marking it would be unsure about it.

but invites, things etc - they are colloquialisms, which is a whole other subject?

sorry, I'm off sick and bored.....

In Ireland it’s perfectly acceptable. As an Irishwoman I have to reign it in, now that I live in merry old England .

Jade Goody used to 'myself' herself all the time, drove me fucking nuts!

Eveforever - thanks for answering my question.

To answer your question A sounds correct. B does indeed sound a little Irish, but also pretentious, or, as I like to call it, wanky.

So, unless you want to sound wanky (and you're not Irish), I suggest not talking like B!

Proper grammar confuses them?

DH and I always enjoy the ubiquitous holiday rep/tour guide quirks:
We DO recommend ...
We DO suggest ....
Not incorrect, but apparently compulsory. Also the frequent confusion between “haggle” and “barter”: “And if you DO avail yourself of our fantastic trip to the local tat market [always, always strong on leather goods] DO make sure you remember to barter! The locals expect it!”

• Actually I think the stall holders would be baffled if I offered them my necklace and DH’s sunglasses for one of their “hand stitched” leather jackets.

Loathe misuse of the reflexive pronoun but I don’t think it’s a new thing. I remember years ago a woman I worked with would do it as an attempt I think to sound sophisticated

“Could you return the document to myself”
“No, only you can return a document to yourself, or you can give it to me and Ill hand it to you but you’ll have to hand it to yourself”

The same with the I/me conundrum. People have been told the correct form is ‘I’ and haven’t bothered to check whether it makes sense.

(David Beckham and) I have been given an invitation to the RW
Thank you for the invitation you gave to me (and David) for the RW

That said, I didn’t learn any grammar at school because it wasn’t formally taught as far as I can remember. I got kicked into touch working for the Daily Mirror at a young age where all the old hacks were appalled by my generation’s complete lack of knowledge. Perhaps they do it differently now in schools.

Drives myself nuts at work.

I think it tends to be people who are insecure about their grammar. I must admit, when I see someone writing something like "Myself and my friend went to London" I want to ask how on earth they could possibly think that is better or easier than "My friend and I went ...".

I'm also horrified that some English teachers have apparently been actively teaching people that it's correct to write something like "Send that to David and myself". FFS, you only have to take "David and" out of the sentence to see that it doesn't work.

yoouokhun - it should actually read Thank you for the invitation you gave to (David and) me. One always puts oneself last.

Which English teachers? Where? Most of us are reasonably competent at grammar...

Myself finds this very annoying

It boils my piss. Quite often I'll go to a shop or sit down to eat somewhere and the staff will say "how can I help yourself today?" "what can I get for yourselves today" You can fuck off, that's how you can help.

Chickoletta, some people have referred upthread to their English teachers marking them wrong when they correctly used "me" instead of "myself".

Mind you, I recently found myself looking at an inspirational poster on an English teacher's classroom door referring to "Standing on the shoulder's of giant's". I was desperate to find a marker pen to correct it.

"Myself and my friend went to London"

also, subject/object swap has occured.

Every single time my boss has to sign off an email or a letter that I've written he corrects "If you have any queries please contact Crazy or me on .... to "Crazy or myself".

Drives me mad. I've tried to explain it to him but he just doesn't get it.

It's been going on for a while, at least since the early noughties, if not the 90s. I remember sales people using it most, trying to sound more upmarket than they really are - crossed my mind that it might be a "sales technique" that they are taught - but it really doesn't work, just makes them seem a bit dim.

I once met someone (first and only language is English) who said, 'I should have went to XYZ'.

As my mouth fell open in disbelief she continued, 'If I had went to XYZ, then I ...'.

I was so shocked I failed to actually listen to what she actually said.

But if I had have listened, she probably would have thrown in a few 'myself' phrases too.

Yes about SLT in education! I taught ESOL in an FE College and later was Curriculum Leader for English and maths. Everyone was rightly very keen on SPAG and woe betide any teacher or classroom assistant observed to make an error in class or in lesson materials, meanwhile I had to listen to my line manager constantly use “us” as the 2nd person plural possessive adjective “We need to get us ducks in a row.” etc. Also “were” for third person singular and plural “I were waiting for two weeks...” I know that’s West Yorks dialect, but while accents are fine, we aren’t supposed to model or use dialect in a formal educational setting. We regularly received emails from SLT with wayward apostrophes and dodgy grammar.

molly did that really shock you that much? I hear stuff like that constantly, it’s not that big a thing, is it?

Crazy, I once proofread a witness statement for a partner in a law firm who had misused a particular punctuation mark all the way through. (I think it was a semi-colon.) I corrected it and he made me change them all back again, saying, "I prefer it like that."

Myself don't know. Myself assume that themselves view the personal pronoun "me" as informal while the reflexive pronoun is formal and the "correct" form. Whatever it is, myself find it annoying.

English is a second language for me, but I kept hearing this when I lived in England and was mystified. It just sounds wrong, it is wrong, and it sounds unintelligent, so if it is an attempt to be posh (ugh, that word), then it backfires. It also doesn't sound polite, in my opinion.

Its wrong. Very wrong. Except when your 3 year old says to you "Mummy.... I love you all yourself"