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]

You're wrong, though. Every dialect has rules, and if you want I can go hog-wild and start compiling the information to prove it.

I'm not complaining about language having rules, I'm complaining about people being prejudiced against those who speak dialects with different sets of rules.


By contrast, most dialects I've encountered... they don't seem to have any rules. Everyone just throws words together and makes up new ones and slurs everything together. That's not fun! That's not pretty! Rules make the language pretty!

But that's not true! What you ought to do, because it's *really cool* is sit down with lists and lists of information on this dialect or that dialect, and figure out the rules that govern it. Then you'll feel better, and you'll have learned something new, and you'll have done what you like doing anyway (figuring out grammatical rules).

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Mmkay, so here's where my personal prejudices come into play.

1.) I was one of those kids who didn't have any friends. I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on, and I have a pretty emotional attachment to the particular dialect in which most books are written. To me, it's like English has been my best friend for as long as I can remember, and I want to make sure that she's not going to get screwed over or pushed around when she's out in the world. If that makes any sense.

2. About the double-negative thing: I sometimes have a problem understanding the spoken word, even when I'm listening, because the sound goes by so damn fast. It's exacerbated by certain regional accents, speed of speech, and other factors, but sometimes it happens without those things. I don't think it's a particularly unique or unusual problem, either. In some situations, I've had to doublecheck what I thought I just heard, because the double negative made me think that someone had something, or wanted something, when that wasn't the case.

[conuly]

1. That makes sense.
2. Codeman's not here, so I'll say it: Are you sure you don't have a CAPD? There, it's said. Now I don't have to say anything else on the subject.
3. You're also a bit late, though. I'm movin' on, and was since... um... really, about 4am today. *hugs* Wanna talk about 9/11 and how it was so obviously a conspiracy? I can get into that. Of course, I don't think it *was* a conspiracy, but whatever, I'm bored.

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Sure thing. Moving on is good.

I don't think I have a CAPD, or if I do, it's very very very mild. It may just be a result of my general problems with socialization, which are also mild, but enough to be annoying.

Oh, and 9/11? I blame Canada.