Yourself/myself instead of you/me

[shineypenny]

These are used increasingly in emails and now even conversation (cringe):

'I spoke to yourself on the telephone yesterday...'
'It was done by my colleague and myself' or, even worse, 'It was done by myself'

What's wrong with
'I spoke to you on the telephone yesterday'
'It was done by my colleague and me' and 'I completed it'

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but this is really grating at me at the moment.

sometimes you have to say 'one'.. as in 'one shouldn't use myself when one means me' - you can't say you in that sentence, or I, because it's general not specific.

She doesn't like the tendency to use statements as questions, either, LeBOF. Apparently, "est-ce que" definitely marks one out as a furriner, rather like correct use of reflexives, "one" and "whom" in English!

Do they not have their own version of A.I. In France then?

hanginggarden - "But you would reasonably say 'I sent it to myself' or 'you saw it yourself'" - that's correct, because you've already mentioned yourself in the sentence, and you are then reflecting again on you.

Plupervert, I use whom, quite often oh, the shame!

(Mum and her siblings were brung up in France though, so maybe that's why we used 'one'.)

Mind you, I do find myself saying quite ridiculous things like "I shall hie me there forthwith" which I nearly used in a PM just now, but managed to change just in time. I thinks that's definitely furrin with Grande Dame's Ancient English thrown in for good measure.

I HATE this idiotic trend! People think they're being refined, I think.

I am always correcting my colleagues who have been known to put it in letters, please contact myself on the number above...

What is A.I., LeBOF? I was thinking Artificial Intelligence, but that doesn't seem quite right!

No shame in using "whom", Jux! If you're using it correctly, surely the only issue is a little bit of awkwardness when you are talking to people who might be made to feel uncomfortable if "corrected" in this way. That's the way I look at the use of it, anyway!

I thought I was alone

Sorry, I mean Australian Intonation- you know, that upward inflection that makes statements sound like a question.

People might be made to feel uncomfortable just because I use the word whom? How can I be correcting them? I don't understand waiiiiillllll

smartypants, can I work with you? You won't annoy me, I tend to be glad when someone corrects me.

Come to think of it, the statement-as-question might indeed be a kind of French Australian Intonation - how clever! I'll have to write to my friend and tell her!

Jux, I just meant that people can get nervous when they feel they are in the presence of someone who cares about grammar and correctness. Since I am one of those, yet also one of those who doesn't like to look down on non-Obnoxious Illiterates, I sometimes use some strange constructions to avoid actually using "whom"... No doubt I'm being an idiot and most people don't care or notice.... Isn't it lovely, though, to be in Pedants' Corner, where we do care?

Yes it is. Tbh I think most people don't notice, and of the one's who do, many are likely to just think "snotty bitch" which is what they tend to think of me anyway because of my accent and habit of reading books and not watching Eastenders . I did have one guy for whom I was drawing a beer suddenly cry "Whom? whom? A young lady who uses whom correctly! Come home with me, my dear, and I shall ....." there followed some very scurrilous but imaginative and extremely funny suggestions!

Yes, Jux, you may come and work with me. I can use you to replace the bloke that sits near me and says, 'somethink' 20 times a day.

I correct him too!

I am considering divorcing dh as he has recently taken to saying "reckernise".

Jux, I married a Johnny Foreigner, so there is no need for me to take any mistakes of his personally! And I get a bit of fun, teasing him about "willages" and so on.

Ooh yes, if it were my dh I'd be unable to restrain myself in the face of willages, either! (no offence meant, but aware I may have overstepped the mark).

Oh, there was more than just willages! There was also viggling!

I once talked about stadia, and had a friend get really excited because I had got it right!

generally in speech I seem to talk how the person to whom I'm talking speaks - eg: if they've got a really strong accent and rough-language, then I'll go all common, and if i'm speaking to a posh person, then I'll go all posh.
That must sound weird if the other side hears it, but I can't help it!
(that doesn't mean I'll start doing Fs instead of THs and it doesn't mean I'll get it wrong, but I'll miss Hs and do glottal stops a lot more etc)

That is an indication of empathy, nickel.

I find that when I'm visiting rellys that my accent goes almost as cut glass as the Queen's! Luckily, it was softened in every day life when I went to my comprehensive school where my horribly posh accent provided great merriment in my class .

Is myself/yourself a reflexive pronoun?

My current irritation is this: "I'm just pre-warning you"

No you're not, you're warning me; that's the point of a warning - it happens before the thing you don't want to happen, happens.

I've even used a semi-colon to try and impress you.

problem being that even when I'm doing the common speaking, I still sound stupidly posh.
(even though I'm really, really common myself!!)

My mum says that a snide woman came up her when I was in infants, and asked her if I used to go to "private school and couldn't afford it anymore" because of my posh voice!

yes sick - it's reflexive