Us Guys

In May 2007 I wrote about the misuse of the perfectly useful Southern American coinage "you all" in Zizou Corder's Lionboy.

I'm now in Falkirk, Scotland, and can report from personal experience that the British nation has its own regional reincarnation of the exclusively-plural "you" (lost after "you" pushed out the singular "thou" to cover both plural and singular numbers).

All that's a long way of saying that tonight at dinner, the waitress repeatedly addressed my father and me as "youse" or "youse guys."