1157: Hisself is More Consistent Feb 8, 2018

Every dialect will have its own rules and its own exceptions thereto, so even in a dialect that is considered "standard" so to speak, it does not mean that it necessarily the most consistent. For instance, in Standard American English and British English, and others, reflexive pronouns are usually formed by the genitive [possessive] form of the personal pronoun + 'self'. For instance 'you' --> 'your' --> 'yourself', as well as 'I' --> 'my' --> 'myself. This is because it was originally two words, but the determiner phrase eventually came to be thought of as a single term. There are two exceptions to this: the 3rd person singular masculine ('himself') and the 3rd person plural ('themselves'). However, in African American English (AAE), the pattern of using the genitive form + 'self' is maintained. This is most obviously seen in 'hisself', which is a standard variant of 'himself', but 'theyselves' is also consistent with the pattern. The reason for this is that in AAE 'they' is also possessive as well as being nominative. For a long time AAE was thought of as lazy and simply ungrammatical English, but in this case it is even more consistent with certain rules.

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