Reflexive pronouns

Question

1)I like him.

2)I myself like him.

what is the difference in meaning between these two sentences?

Answer 1

‘Myself’ there is used both for emphasis, and to mean ‘unlike [someone else]’ or ‘unlike you’ or to mean ‘too’.

So if someone told you ‘he’s not a very nice person’, you might reply with ‘I myself like him’, so as to defend the person in question; you’re saying ‘I like him, unlike you’, and so issuing a kind of conversational challenge. If you didn’t care about that person particularly, you might just shrug and say ‘I like him’.

On the other, if someone said ‘He’s pretty nice’, you’re much more likely to respond with ‘I like him’. But you can also say ‘I myself like him’ to emphasise that you agree; you’re saying ‘I like him too’. However, it’s a much less common usage, because it can carry elements of the ‘conversational challenge’ mentioned earlier, depending (as always) on your tone.