-sen for -self in English: history and usage

In my class there is a gentleman from the north of England who uses "-sen" instead of "-self" in such words as "himself" ("himsen") and "myself" ("mysen").

As far as I can tell, he always uses "-sen" in speech, it is not occasional.

I have never encountered this before and was wondering about its history/etymology and prevalence.

Solution 1:

It appears to be a dialectal variant from East Midlands where:

Reflexive pronouns are characterized by the replacement of "self" with sen (from Middle English seluen):

Y'usen – Yourself, Mesen – Myself, Thisens – Themselves/Yourselves, Ussens – Ourselves

Example:

• We sh'll ay to do it ussens. (We shall have to do it ourselves.)

From (East Midlands English by Natalie Braber, Jonnie Robins)

as well as a Yorkshire variant:

The word self may become sen, e.g. yourself becomes thy sen, tha sen.

From (Petyt, Keith M. (1985), 'Dialect' and 'Accent' in Industrial West Yorkshire, John Benjamins Publishing)

(www.asgbi.org.uk)