Single person plural

Brought up in L'pool but never heard youse although there was a cartoon in the local paper about the antics of local children called The Back entry Diddlers. Mainly in scouse. When we went to the local Cafe Rouge the waitress I think must have been told to be friendly and greeted us with Hi youse guys. I think she was just muddled.

I would never have used the word youse but my mother would say loudly " ewes are female sheep " whenever she heard it used.

I hate the imperious EXCUSE ME said in a loud voice but perhaps that is more about manners. My DH has been heard to say "I think you mean Excuse me please". Very embarrassing !

Good for him!

Our son's emails generally start 'Yo parents' or 'Yo ratbags'

Here in Central Scotland we did not have the plural 'youse' in our vocabulary until there was an influx of miners and their families from the Lanarkshire coalfields. I thought it was a very useful word but both Mother and Teacher were scandalised if we used it. It was deemed 'common' but seemed politer to me than our usual 'You Lot' when addressing a plurality of persons.

I have just been wondering overnight why "youse" has got an "e" on the end . A normal English plural just has an "s" . Shouldn't it be "yous" ?

I hope it didn't keep you awake?

You'd pronounce it differently maybe like "use" rather than "yooze" ?
I like the American you-all myself. as in a drawled out "yawl"

It's more like yuz here, if it's pronunciation yuz iz after.

What about 'yourself' as a politer (I think) version of 'you'? It really annoys me! I like the local 'thee, tha' or (less polite) 'dee, da' for 'you'.

Why is dee less polite than thee? Isn't it just a different pronunciation of the same thing?

I don't thinnk yourself is politer than you. It's just wrong.

Grammatically speaking.

I think 'yourself','myself' are intended to be more polite. Can't imagine why. Don't know why 'dee' is less polite than 'thee' but it is.

OK. Thanks. I don't agree about dee. Differing pronunciations of the same word don't count as less polite to me. Can you give an example?

I myself is irritating. how can I be anything other than myself?and when salesmen say yourself when they mean you they think they are using business speak.

I think 'dee' is a more coarse version of 'thee' so using it to someone you aren't very familiar with is not polite. (As in: ' Don't da 'Deeda' me!'). Also in S Yorkshire used of people from Barnsley but I don't intend to get into that bit of civil war.

Hmm. Sounds like accent prejudice to me. I've never come across that bit inside quotation marks. Has anyone ever said that?

I never heard dee for thee in S Yorkshire when I lived there. My grandad would say 'tha' for thou though, e.g. Does tha want some cake? I don't know if he would have used you with someone unfamiliar, but why should he? He was only speaking his native language. There's no impoliteness in that, even when people from other parts of the country don't understand (or pretend they don't, or are snobby about accents).

Grans! Say "tha' for thou though" fast. It's nice #playingwithEnglishwords

I speak as a native, Bags.

To change the subject completely, I have just returned home from Slough (lucky me! ) by train where there were cancellations because of signalling problems just "outside of" Reading. Surely this is an unnecessary use of a double preposition. Shouldn't it be "outside Reading" ? Maybe it is Berkshire usage : we often hear I got "off of" the bus. Wrong surely.

I constantly hear 'outside of' in which the 'of' is redundant. Conversely, I don't think I've ever heard 'inside of' except when 'inside' is a noun.

I think I've heard "inside of". I find all the variations interesting. It's only when I can't understand something that variations bother me, and then only until I do understand. Then I add them to my collection, so to speak.

There isn't only one way to speak like a native.

And the language will change whether we like it or not because that's what language does, especially with outside influences, of which there are plenty and various.