Post by James SilvertonPost by Chuck RiggsNot to me it doesn't. "Yous", pronounced "youz", is clearly
not pronounced "yoice", which is not so clear with "youse". I
don't see how anyone familiar with the language could
mispronounce "yous", seeing it in print.
I thought the 2nd person plural "youse" (not "yous" in my recollection,
but pronounced "yooz" or /juz/) was an Irish word or a New York one
(probably imported from Ireland). I seem to remember hearing it in Glasgow
too but I'm not sure of that. I note that you live near Dublin; do you
find the usage common there?
--
James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland
Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not
In what's called "Broad Australian" (basically, a rural and working-class
variety) 'youse' is the 2nd person plural (with a voiced fricative) and
usually assumed to derive from Irish English. What's interesting about
these new plural pronouns like Southern "y'all" is that they are sometimes
recruited as "polite" or formal singular pronouns, like French "vous" or
Middle English "ye/yow". It's almost as though 2nd person formal singular,
a form found in all other European languages and in English up to the
eighteenth century, represents a sort of gap in Present English which these
other varieties are 'trying' to fill.
Peter Groves
Melbourne