Question, question or two...

[conuly]

Okay, because I'm a broken record. Two things seem to be a common (and pollable) theme in the recent angsty discussion.

1. "If language changes, eventually we'll have lots of incomprehensible languages instead of just one"
2. "Double negatives are confusing, because two negatives can make a positive".

Now, the first one is pretty much true. Look what happened to Latin, or to Chinese (now Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) However, the question isn't "is this true" but "do we care?". After all, in other places people *expect* to be multi-lingual, to know five or six languages. And we could always go the IAL route, have one auxlang that's not anybody's native language and let the rest of it all go its way.

The second one, I just don't believe. I don't think *anybody* has ever actually gotten confused when hearing a double negative. I know for a fact that it used to be an accepted part of the English language (which, yes, means that the educated classes said it) and that it's a required part of many other languages now. Edit: That's not true. I can certainly believe that *some* people have. However, I don't believe that any native speaker with normal language development has, and I'm fairly certain that most non-native speakers haven't, unless they had a well-meaning (but ill-informed) language instructer tell them that "In English two negatives are a positive", when the reality is "In English, two negatives are a negative, but this usage is considered to be uneducated".

So, poll!

[Poll #409457]

You all know my view by now, so it was hard for me to keep my bias out of this poll. My apologies.

Edit: Wow. I'm honestly surprised. I didn't expect *anybody* would pick "yes, recently, native speaker". Okay, I'm not too surprised with Moggy, because she's not typical I think, but the other (can't spell name gah)? I wasn't expecting that. I still think that my case still stands, most people are never gonna get confused by this usage after childhood. Keep voting, of course. I'm just chattering.

Comments

[conuly]

But why do you consider it sloppy? Would you consider Spanish or French to be sloppy? Why do you think that the standard sounds better, or that nonstandards stray from the standard? The latter certainly isn't the case, and if you want I can explain this in detail.

Oh, hell, you talked me into it. Can you tell this is one of my favorite subjects?

Okay. Let's say we have language A... let's just call this Early Modern English.

Early Modern English has several children. Let's name some of them Standard American English, Standard British English, and AAVE (African American Vernacular English).

Now, it's clear that the two standards are brothers, there is no parental relationship. This is despite angry Britons claiming to understand English better than American. It's also equally clear, from the little chart I didn't draw, that AAVE isn't descended from SAE at all - they're siblings to each other. So AAVE (Ebonics, though I loathe the name) doesn't stray from SAE. Instead, they have *both* strayed from Early Modern English.

[azuresunglasses.livejournal.com]

It's sloppy because the rules of modern English state double negatives are a no-no. It's a simple rule.
Spanish and French have the grammar of double negatives, it is part of the native grammar to do that.
By all means, let people speak the way they were raised to speak. However, different dialects and different grammatical allowances within those dialects are not reason to change the grammatical rules for the standard of the language.
Most people do not routinely use double negatives.

[conuly]

But the rules of Modern English *don't* state that! Ask any linguist.

However, different dialects and different grammatical allowances within those dialects are not reason to change the grammatical rules for the standard of the language.

Why not?

Most people do not routinely use double negatives.

Can you prove that? No, really, can you? That'd be cool.

[azuresunglasses.livejournal.com]

Most people I know, and even those who are not well educated do not use double negatives. However, we all live in very small worlds, so maybe this is specific to the places I've lived in and traveled to. We shouldn't change the rules to fit a minority. What would the rest of us do? God forbid, be grammatically incorrect.
What would it be like to live in a world where schoolchildren were taught that "I ain't got no oranges," was the best was to communicate one's lack of orange-colored delicious fruit?

[conuly]

What would it be like to live in a world where schoolchildren were taught that "I ain't got no oranges," was the best was to communicate one's lack of orange-colored delicious fruit?

About the same as the living in the world we're in right now, except people would say that "don't have any" was uneducated. It's the same problem. The *intelligent* solution is to get rid of that idea of "right" and "wrong". There's no logic behind it. It's rather like saying "gay marriage is wrong because it's unnatural, and we shouldn't change the laws to suit a minority, and what would the world be like if kids were taught it's all right to kiss people of the same sex!".

Note, for the impaired, I don't *actually* think that this is on the same scale. I do, however, think that this is the same basic problem at the core, one of... well, the status quo. And you know what I think about *that* by now.

[conuly]

Oh yeah, and what makes it sloppy? That makes it, at most, ungrammatical (though the reality is that it's merely non-prestigious), but not *sloppy*.

[fjorab-teke.livejournal.com]

Usually the offending person who is using the "sloppy double negative" normally does speak in "proper standard English," and sometimes it grates on my nerves when they're being "lazy" about it or purposely annoying me with it when I'm not in a pleasant mood. I'm normally not going to pick on others for it unless I'm feeling particularly annoyed by them with this and other things.

"Don't go nowhere!" OK, so I want to get out of here because they are bugging me...so I WON'T "go nowhere".... *grin*

Nah, usually I only poke fun if they're being silly or (on the above example) they're bugging the crap out of me. ;-)

[conuly]

Ah, okay :)

Like I make fun of Lizziey's code-switching, I guess. In reality, I admire the skill.