Mind your language
`WHY DO English people, some of them good writers, often say myself when they mean me? As, for example, `She took my mother and myself to tea.' So writes Mr George Getze, from Cali- fornia.
The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is of at least descriptive help here: 'The use of myself as the sole of the first-mentioned object of a verb is now archaic. In an enumeration, when not occupying the first place, it does not now express any special emphasis, being in this position commonly preferred to me.' If you read this a couple of times it makes some sense. (We are talking about myself as a substitute for me.) I think I know another reason: me sounds 'rude'. That is why the mistake `She took my mother and 1 to tea' is so often made.
Two other points of interest. One is that the original form was me plus self. think this is still preserved in non-liter- ate speech: meself — the sort of word- form condemned by critics of wireless announcers. The other is to wonder whY Mr Getze's Californian circle has dropped the English style of usage.
Dot Wordsworth
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