Originally Posted by DannoXYZ
"But Danno, "excessive" use of myself could well be a regional thing. Of course, I'm not sure in which way you see "myself" being used so frequently, so you could be right as well..."
Well, I'm not sure if it's a regional thing, might be because English is such an unstructured language, coming from a mixture of German, Anglo, Saxon and various Indo-European languages. I certainly appears to be increasingly misused in the States with the common exposure of TV celebrities and news-anchors who barely passed high-school. Main problem comes in recognizing the use of nouns and pronouns and their locations in a sentence relative to the verb. I'll break this up in to a progression of 5 distinct cases so that it makes sense in how myself is so commonly and mistakenly used.
Here's a text I found for you that shows how Irish English differs in how "myself" is used:
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache...e+myself&hl=en
I'd also like to add that a language belongs to its speakers, not to a small group of self-appointed guardians who resist any and every change. Languages constantly evolve, or they die.
If people generally feel that using "myself" in ways you find disturbing, is comfortable, then that's what will happen to English eventually. That's the only significant driving force behind changes in all languages.
English is not a finished language, perfect in every way. It's evolving, and will continue to do so until it's either dead or no longer English. I'm sure people in 17th century England had similar arguments, and just look at what's happened since then...