Help with English: feel oneself + -ed, -ing

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Re: Help with English: feel oneself + -ed, -ing

Postby seito » Sun Oct 07, 2018 4:11 pm

"I feel myself neglected" sounds like a somewhat literary way of saying "I feel neglected." I feel like I've read it before in some context of that sort, but i can't quite pinpoint where.
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Re: Help with English: feel oneself + -ed, -ing

Postby Serpent » Thu Nov 01, 2018 8:56 pm

I came across the following exchange in "the color purple".
N: You feeling yourself?
C: Yes.
(C had just asked N not to borrow her clothes)

When I google "you feeling yourself" I get stuff that seems to be about feeling good about yourself/feeling like your own self. so kinda like "are you okay?" :?
Can anyone clarify this?
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Re: Help with English: feel oneself + -ed, -ing

Postby zKing » Thu Nov 01, 2018 9:25 pm

The only situation I can think of where "I feel myself neglected" would be spoken in natural native speech is if it was an interrupted clarification to emphasize the fact that this is a personal feeling/opinion about the situation and that others in the group may feel differently. Something like:

Speaker A: "I don't like how he's treating us. He's ignoring us."
Speaker B: "Really? I don't think he's been that bad."
Speaker A: "Well... I feel, myself, neglected."

Even then, I would say it might be more natural to say:
"I feel, personally, neglected"
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Re: Help with English: feel oneself + -ed, -ing

Postby jonm » Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:15 pm

Serpent wrote:I came across the following exchange in "the color purple".
N: You feeling yourself?
C: Yes.
(C had just asked N not to borrow her clothes)

When I google "you feeling yourself" I get stuff that seems to be about feeling good about yourself/feeling like your own self. so kinda like "are you okay?" :?
Can anyone clarify this?

Yes, that's how I would interpret it, as meaning something like, "Are you feeling all right?" And I guess it could always have additional nuances in context. I don't think I've ever heard that exact question before, but I've occasionally heard something like, "I'm not feeling quite myself today," which I take to mean, "I don't feel quite right today, something feels off." There might also be a sense of disavowing one's own actions or suggesting that they're out of character, as in the example sentence given here: "I'm sorry for getting upset at you earlier, I'm just not feeling myself today." There's a bit more discussion of this variation on the expression here.
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Re: Help with English: feel oneself + -ed, -ing

Postby StringerBell » Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:40 pm

Serpent wrote:I came across the following exchange in "the color purple".
N: You feeling yourself?
C: Yes.
(C had just asked N not to borrow her clothes)

When I google "you feeling yourself" I get stuff that seems to be about feeling good about yourself/feeling like your own self. so kinda like "are you okay?" :?
Can anyone clarify this?


I agree with you and trippingly. It's not really a common thing to hear someone ask, but if someone said to me, "are you feeling yourself?" I would assume they were asking because I was acting weird, seemed to be sick, preoccupied with something, or something about my behavior wasn't normal. It's probably more common to say about oneself: "I'm not feeling like myself."

I just asked my husband about "you feeling yourself?" and "I'm not feeling myself" and he was incredibly confused and had no idea what I was even saying. :lol:

It's been many years since I've read this book, but from what I remember, the main character was a very poor, uneducated young girl from the south and the author tried to write in a way that reflected this, so there's probably a lot of non-standard English stuff in there.
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Re: Help with English: feel oneself + -ed, -ing

Postby Serpent » Fri Nov 02, 2018 12:27 am

StringerBell wrote:It's been many years since I've read this book, but from what I remember, the main character was a very poor, uneducated young girl from the south and the author tried to write in a way that reflected this, so there's probably a lot of non-standard English stuff in there.

(spoiler alert)
This is from a section which is in perfectly standard English otherwise (her sister's letters). However, this quote was given as direct speech.
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Re: Help with English: feel oneself + -ed, -ing

Postby eido » Fri Nov 02, 2018 1:45 am

Serpent wrote:I came across the following exchange in "the color purple".
N: You feeling yourself?
C: Yes.
(C had just asked N not to borrow her clothes)

When I google "you feeling yourself" I get stuff that seems to be about feeling good about yourself/feeling like your own self. so kinda like "are you okay?" :?
Can anyone clarify this?

That's what it means. I'd say it's pretty common, a colloquial expression.
Although I'd say "feeling like yourself" has a somewhat different connotation, for some reason.
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Re: Help with English: feel oneself + -ed, -ing

Postby patrickwilken » Fri Nov 02, 2018 6:01 am

It's the same as when you say "I see" or "I hear" or "I taste" etc. In all cases we know you are doing the seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, so it's redundant to add "myself" unless you want to make a special point of emphasizing that you and not someone else is the object of the phrase.

A. I feel competent to do the task
B. I feel myself competent to do the task.

Both A and B are correct, but B emphasizes yourself in the sentence.

Likewise after a fight you could say "I felt myself for injuries" to emphasize you were feeling yourself, as opposed "I felt for injuries" which is ambiguous and could mean to you were feeling someone else. However, you would say "I felt my back" rather than "I felt myself my back" as the myself is redundant in the latter. However:

C. I feel myself competent to do my task.

C is still grammatically correct (though perhaps rare), and emphasizes that you feel you are capable of doing your task.
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