Women!

[DecoysBitch]

Having watched and participated in a few of the gender-related threads recently, I'm still utterly flummoxed at how "woman" and "women" can be mixed up! It happens a lot, not just on those threads.

How difficult can it be?

Woman: singular noun.

Women: plural noun.

Doesn't happen with man/men I find.

Why is it? Surely it should be "Is it for you"

Please explain, Stealth as I really do want to understand. It sounds so wrong

Well I'd assumed it was a reflexive pronoun but am starting to doubt myself :o
Yhere is a definite emphasis that imo should be there, in the way that "please call myself tomorrow" should not.

Staff who deal with the public in businesses such as restaurants, call centres, and the like, quite often use yourself in a rather different way, as a substitute for you: Is this soup for yourself?; Is the appliance for yourself, sir? Using 'yourself' in this way should be avoided in any kind of formal writing, and is considered wrong by some people even in speech

Do societies mistakes effect me, or impact myself in any way? Defiantly not, and anyone who things they do has another thing coming. I could of expressed myself (or should that be 'me') better, but in me saying this, it makes it clear, I think. Having made my point, it's time I deceased from saying anymore.

I know the Police started using it, years ago, but it appears to have been adopted by all walks of life.

I will be less twitchy if I know it is legally legitimate (And I know I may be wrong - but this seems to be too modern and just one step too far)

Seek

Re pharmacy, the related question "Are you picking up this piles cream for yourself?" is completely unobjectionable.

On the other hand, the hyper corrected "estate agent's reflexive" is annoying.

'Are you picking up this cream for yourself' - Unobjectionable
'Is this for yourself' - Objectionable

Exactly. Makes me twitch.

How did yourself know about my piles?
Yes, think you're probably right Evan sorry

Thing is, the first part of the question is interchangeable:

Is this for ?
Are you picking this up for ?

so when a speaker is speaking on the fly, rather than preparing a statement, it's easy to carry something across semantically without noticing that the syntax/morphology needs amendment.

MNers do this all the time despite good native competency and best intentions. How many double posts a day where the second one says "ffs I meant I WOULDN'T blame you".

I except that mistakes happen and don't let them effect myself. Me and you probably agree about this.

No, you're fine Stealth - no need for apology. I need to understand it myself (note - used in the correct context, there ) as well. Isn't this what Pedants' Corner is? I may ask questions in the future, as I often doubt myself too.

MrsH - I think the thing there is, however, it is usually a set pattern of pre-prepared speech. Every time I call the Vet, the Receptionist will say "What was your address" and every time I visit the Pharmacy, the person giving me the medication will ask "Is this for yourself" - different person every time. It's almost as though there's a special school, where they have to learn the patter. One could accept a one-off, but not on a regular basis.

Museumofcurry I'm afraid your correction needs a tweak. The last word should be 'me', not I.

Yes, it's much more common now. But at first it will have been a spontaneous error. Most of us don't learn language systematically but by amassing lots of input and making deductions from it.

Ever wondered why in English we actively like something whereas in so many other languages the something pleases us? It's because hundreds of years ago our ancestors made mistakes that became standard over a couple of generations.

So we can put our descriptivist hats on and remark that 'me' and 'myself' may well become interchangeable by 2100 ... or our prescriptivist hats, and shriek when our children get it wrong.

This is Pendants. I'm pretty sure I know which is likely...

I'm raising a pedant. DS once told his Y1 teacher off for a double negative. Although secretly pleased I had a little chat about it maybe not being polite.

Museumofcurry I'm afraid your correction needs a tweak. The last word should be 'me', not I.

Ambiguous, really. Depends on whether you view the 'as' as a preposition or conjunction.

Unverbed subject pronouns are pretty old fashioned nowadays.

... as I am. (Conj)
... as me. (Prep)

I was prescriptivist until I studied linguistics. Now I'm more chilled.

So we can put our descriptivist hats on and remark that 'me' and 'myself' may well become interchangeable by 2100 ... or our prescriptivist hats, and shriek when our children get it wrong.

Hypercorrections are a different kettle of fish than normal language evolution in that they're an affectation.

All sorts of things started as an affectation though. Classic example is (European, not Latin American) Spanish -th- for -s- substitution which is now standard.

"... and I" is an English example which I think is well on the way to standardisation. It annoys me far more to see "send it to my wife and I" than "send it to myself". Losing battle, though, I fear.

I agree.

What annoys me though is that it's clearly people thinking that one should never use the word 'me', because they've been corrected when they start a sentence with 'Me and xxx' or 'Xxx and me'. They think they're doing the right thing. When actually we should be explaining the (really quite simple) difference between the object and subject of a sentence. You don't hear people interchanging 'us' for 'we'. Just seems illogical that they do it all the time with me/i.

I can’t be doing with “ Can I get” instead of “ Can I have”. Another Americanism.

Feel exactly the same MrsHathaway r.e. "And I/me", I think that's my main gripe atm. From what I've seen/heard it's becoming prolific. But I won't give in, no no.

And Smidge, yy.