accusative cursing

[James Harbeck]

>Sants pruh-zarve us! How soon they forget! When I was a kid in the
>'Forties, this use of    "-self" in cartoons, comics, movies, and on
>radio shows to indicate that someone was Irish was as common as the
>use of "gwine" to show that someone was black. Stereotypical
>Irishwomen always referred to their husbands as "himself," for
>example.

No doubt this is one factor lying behind the proscription of the
intensive "-self" as nonstandard, uneducated, et cetera. Nothing like
a bit of prejudice and us-versus-them to turn a point of usage into a
shibboleth.

Ciao,
James Harbeck.

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