BrainKing - Discussion boards (Languages)

Languages

Ask questions or just talk about different languages. Since BrainKing is an international game site supporting many languages, this board can be kind of useful.

Since we will be dealing with pronunciation of words rather than their spelling, I think it's useful to have a link to The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet.

To see translations of some frequently used phrases and sentences in other languages see Languages

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18. July 2006, 19:04:02

Walter Montego

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Subject: Double negatives or is it "Yes, we have no bananas?"

As the teacher lectures the class explaining not to use double negatives and uses various examples, the students begin to drift off in that somnolent way they have when their eyes glaze over but still continue to look in the teacher's direction. The teacher senses this and writes some examples on the chalkboard to try and see if anyone is paying attention. He also includes positives with his double negatives in an attempt to show the proper usages.
"Logically", he explains, "the use of two negatives in a sentence should make the sentence positive in meaning, but that is not how people talk when they say things like 'No, you cannot have that.' As this is never taken to mean, 'You may have that.' No one says, 'Yes, you cannot have that' or 'No, you may have that.' There is no way to have two positives have this problem and have a negative meaning as in, 'Yes, you may have that.'
From the back row a student replies, "Yeah, right."

18. July 2006, 19:08:03

King Reza

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Subject: Re: Double negatives or is it "Yes, we have no bananas?"

Walter Montego:Is it a joke?

18. July 2006, 19:22:41

Walter Montego

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Subject: Re: Double negatives or is it "Yes, we have no bananas?"

Modified by Walter Montego (18. July 2006, 19:24:10)

King Reza: If I could have remembered it right, it might have read a lot better. Somewhere there's a collection of usages in English that are grammatically correct, but are almost never spoken or writen. That was the point I was trying to make. In this collection the word "and" is used. Apparently, and never appears twice in a row as and and. And and is so uncommon and yet it makes perfect sense as I write here, does it not? Untorn would seem like that too, but WatfordFC has found such a simple use of it that it bears to keep in mind the rule about exceptions to the rule. You'd think that as rare as and and is that three ands in a row could not happen in a sentence and have that sentence make sense, right? Consider the two cases of and and and and and and. And and and and and and might be extreme examples of this, but they do exist. Does anyone know of this collection? I'm sure it'd be of some interest to this discussion board. :)