On 12/06/2015 12:48 PM, Chris wrote:
"man" is still used as a gender neutral pronoun in German, however, for
some reason it's frowned upon these days, just like "one" in English.
It's considered "arrogant" and old fashioned, but it's effin useful and
solves a lot of problems.
Mind you, decisions made by those who compile dictionaries and
"standards" are not at all based on the reality of a given language.
Double negation exists in English (and many other languages), but it's
stigmati(s|z)ed as being "incorrect". The vote was 5 to 4 when this
decision was made in England. The official reasoning behind it was that
minus + minus = plus, i.e. "I don't have no money" would mean "I do have
money", which is complete horsesh*t. Of course it means "I don't have
money". The real reason, of course, was class snobbery and elitism:
double negation was and still is commonly used in working class English
in England (and the US, I think). Ironically enough, double negation is
obligatory in standard French, while it is not used in colloquial
French. This shows you how arbitrary these standards are. Don't take
them too seriously, and don't start religious wars about some eggheads'
decisions ;)
The same goes for "ain't". There's no reason why "ain't" should be "bad
English". "I ain't got no money" is perfectly fine, although it might
make the odd Oxbridge fellow cringe and spill his tea. But what the
Dickens, old chap!
I must be rare, cos I ain't posh n' well educated but I deplore the use
of double negatives in English. I might be heard t'say "I ain't got n'
money" (cos it be true) but in that case the "n'" is the local dialect
contraction of "any". Other areas of the UK can't use the same excuse,
maybe they got it from us but didn't understand what we were say'n,
which is very common, but am more inclined to blame ignorance.
Don't know anything about double negative usage in French, but I do know
that they are a way making super polite requests in Japanese.
Lets all not not stop arguing the minutia.
A...
