it's a deep seated
belief that multi-syllabic words are 'more fancy' than monosyllabic (this has a long history in English with vigourous debates on both sides). So, yourself is perceived as a fancy substitute for you. The fact that they have (or rather had) very different grammatical roles is lost on people.

It goes back to the Norman invasion, where Norman French had simpler phonotactics and thus needed more syllables in words. This was compounded by English losing its inflections, and then later the Biblical translations that suffered from the long held belief that 'English' was not good enough for the Word of God, so started borrowing lots of Latin and Greek and inventing a few more, and the grammar schools that taught Latin etc etc. Basically, a very long history of Latin and Romance languages being the languages of power and education.

For similar reasons, people are starting to increasingly use 'elevator' instead of 'lift'. And similar reason why autumn replaced fall.
( Sextant goes to him is emotionally erect, on this day, Sun 11 Apr 2010, 4:32, 1 reply)

polysyllabic, even

( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Mon 12 Apr 2010, 10:13, closed)