Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Writer's Workshop [Public] => Topic started by: Sailor Stone on January 07, 2020, 11:34:09 PM
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I was just on a tech forum and came across this beauty of a sentence in one of the subject threads:
"Ain't nobody got no time for that."
Is this a legitimate triple negative? I will try to break it down:
Aint' (negative number one which signals the sentence to be a negative) nobody (negative number two which, like in mathematics where two negatives make a positive, now brings the sentence back to the positive) got no, (negative number three, which now brings the original negative back into line as the writer of the sentence intended for it to be, a net positive) time for that.
It's not often that I find such a sentence in the wild. Have I found the rare and elusive "triple negative"? Does anyone else ever come across a train wreck like this?
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Have I heard that used?
Absolutely!
:banana-riding-llama-smiley-em :banana-riding-llama-smiley-em :banana-riding-llama-smiley-em
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When it comes to vernacular, anything goes (e.g. "I'm is talking right!")
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My kids love to say "We the best music" (DJ Kaled) just to hear me say, "We the worst grammar".
I've heard "aint nobody got time for that".
Maybe it's kind of like "I could care less" has replaced "I couldn't care less," and literally now means figuratively etc, etc, and so forth.
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I don't know if it is rare, but it's a beauty - and, speaking as a Brit, it sounds right out of the southern USA, there's a lovely Yankee twang to it.
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It might could be.
Interestingly, some languages like French have the double negative structured into them, to mean the negative, not the negated negative. It's one source of our own double negatives in English, especially dialects of American English--the French/Creole/Cajun influences, especially among immigrants and those lacking access to formal education, historically.
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I ain't got no clue.
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I never took French, but my kid is and they were warned at the beginning of the semester if they run their homework through google translate the teachers will know because google translate is really good at the sophisticated French conjugations that aren't taught until the AP level.
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I ain't got no clue.
Not me, neither.
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It might could be.
Interestingly, some languages like French have the double negative structured into them, to mean the negative, not the negated negative. It's one source of our own double negatives in English, especially dialects of American English--the French/Creole/Cajun influences, especially among immigrants and those lacking access to formal education, historically.
Yes, and regarding the lack of access to a formal education; I believe (not one hundred percent sure on this) that there was no southern accent in the United States until after the Civil War when large rural areas were left in utter poverty and the "southern accent" grew out of a combination of local dialects that regressed from what was considered proper speak before the war.
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It might be, or it might not be, but I can't tell one way nor the other nohow.
It might could be.
Interestingly, some languages like French have the double negative structured into them, to mean the negative, not the negated negative. It's one source of our own double negatives in English, especially dialects of American English--the French/Creole/Cajun influences, especially among immigrants and those lacking access to formal education, historically.
Yes, and regarding the lack of access to a formal education; I believe (not one hundred percent sure on this) that there was no southern accent in the United States until after the Civil War when large rural areas were left in utter poverty and the "southern accent" grew out of a combination of local dialects that regressed from what was considered proper speak before the war.
The accents of the four major British-American folkways have their origins in Britain and Ireland. See David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed for more details.
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I don't know if it is rare, but it's a beauty - and, speaking as a Brit, it sounds right out of the southern USA, there's a lovely Yankee twang to it.
Yup, you have Brit bona fides. Yankee twang isn't a Southern U.S. thing.
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I don't know if it is rare, but it's a beauty - and, speaking as a Brit, it sounds right out of the southern USA, there's a lovely Yankee twang to it.
I live in the South Carolina and have heard this many times.
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I don't know if it is rare, but it's a beauty - and, speaking as a Brit, it sounds right out of the southern USA, there's a lovely Yankee twang to it.
I live in the South Carolina and have heard this many times.
Ha! Good for us, I live in South Carolina as well, but what I don't see often is something like that being written in a tech forum. I think hearing it is fairly common, but seeing it in print on a forum where educated people are online is rather startling.
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Ehhh, you just need to get rid of that "no" and it will read correctly. :tap
(https://miro.medium.com/max/659/1*8xraf6eyaXh-myNXOXkqLA.jpeg)
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I just knew Sweet Brown would make an appearance in this thread. :icon_rofl:
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I was just on a tech forum and came across this beauty of a sentence in one of the subject threads:
"Ain't nobody got no time for that."
Is this a legitimate triple negative? I will try to break it down:
Aint' (negative number one which signals the sentence to be a negative) nobody (negative number two which, like in mathematics where two negatives make a positive, now brings the sentence back to the positive) got no, (negative number three, which now brings the original negative back into line as the writer of the sentence intended for it to be, a net positive) time for that.
It's not often that I find such a sentence in the wild. Have I found the rare and elusive "triple negative"? Does anyone else ever come across a train wreck like this?
I dur say there's more negatives goin' on in that there comment.
I know I ain't got no time for no more negatives cos there ain't any more negatives I can handle right now and that right there is the only positive thing to say about that, ain't that the truth!
:eek: :dizzy :icon_eek:
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I don't know if it is rare, but it's a beauty - and, speaking as a Brit, it sounds right out of the southern USA, there's a lovely Yankee twang to it.
Yup, you have Brit bona fides. Yankee twang isn't a Southern U.S. thing.
Sorry. Didn't mean to offend. :icon_redface:
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I don't know if it is rare, but it's a beauty - and, speaking as a Brit, it sounds right out of the southern USA, there's a lovely Yankee twang to it.
Yup, you have Brit bona fides. Yankee twang isn't a Southern U.S. thing.
Sorry. Didn't mean to offend. :icon_redface:
Oh, you took that wrong. There is no offense. I thought it was cute. Twangs tend to be New England. South is drawl.