Re: "us" for "me" and "f" for "th" in the UK

On 2 May, 00:48, "Heidi Graw" <hg...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This may have something to do with the Monarchy and how
a Monarch speaks using the plural form.

So, if you wish to put on airs about yourself and place
a great importance upon your person, then you would
use "us" and "we" instead of "me" and "I."

Usually, when someone wants to step in after having
watched a fool try numerous times to accomplish something,
one might step up to the plate and say, "Let us have a go."
It is used in a teasing manner to indicate one's superiority.

Since no-one else seems to have responded to this interesting but
untenable theory, let me just assure you that the slightest
acquaintance with the idiom in use would convince you it has nothing
to do with the regal / authorial first person plural. Just because in
popular mythology the Queen uses a Royal 'we' (though in fact the only
context in which she does so still is that of written instruments such
as letters patent and other ultra-formal texts prepared for her
signature or seal) it does not mean that British people of all classes
nurse a pretender-to-the-throne complex, in which their subdued belief
in their own royalty bursts out in ungoverned pronoun use. I love the
idea, though.

You really need to get to grips with the whole dialect and register
context of the usage. There is nothing, repeat nothing, grandiloquent
or superior about "gissajob", for instance. I can't offer an account
of how it came about, except to say that it doesn't seem paralleled in
the nominative form - i.e. people who say "us" for "me" don't say "we"
for "I". But possessive pronouns do seem to be covered: "our"
sometimes = "my" - I would not be at all surprised to hear "gi' us
back our gear" said by an individual with reference only to himself.

Recalling Army days I tend rather vaguely, and paradoxically, to
associate the usage with those who did another interesting thing with
pronouns, i.e. creating the second person plural "yous" when
addressing more than one. This is odd, because this usage seems to
arise from a close awareness of number, whereas use of "us" = "me"
would imply the opposite.

Ditto "f" for "th" (especially in London).

Did you notice this mostly used among younger people...age
30 and under?  If you've mostly noticed it for the under 20
crowd, it may be baby-talk assumed on purpose to irritate
the older crowd.  If you noticed it used mostly by young
women, it may be their way of demonstrating a kind of
immature helplessness.

But "Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be" was a (cloyingly nostalgic)
musical about Cockney life from 1960 and as you'll se from the later
discussion there are enough analogues from other contexts to suggest
that the sound change in question is not babyspeak.
.