By Negatives, Dialects

I think I'd agree with GG... I don't think that "ain't" in place of "do not" or "does not" is what you are likely to hear in most American dialects. These are the most common usages, as far as I know:I ain't seen it. (have/has not, auxiliary)I...

Listen for a glottal stop at the end of "can't". It'll basically sound like the <n> got cut off, rather than completed as a sound. In most American dialects, "can't" is pronounced with the stop when in it's followed by more information: "You can't do that." It's pronounced with an...

Ruslana wrote:Don't and nothing are not acceptable together, are they?Yes, they are acceptable where double negatives are acceptable. They are ok in songs... actually, they are extremely common in songs, but it depends what kind of music you listen to (you don't find double negatives in...

Kooyeen wrote:Hi,I'm just wondering if there's something strange with that "so"... I hear it very often in negative sentences like "Oh my God, that's so not funny!" My impression is that the use of "so + not + adjective/description" may be of Valley Girl origin. It's a fairly new usage.Also, I...

Oh heck yes. I've lived in Georgia all my life, and it used to anger my mother very much how Southerners were portrayed by the media (meaning, people in New York City and Hollywood): racist, emotionally unstable, inbred, uneducated, and violent. And the accent itself was used as a stand-in for...

Hi,I don't give nothing to nobody - Double, triple, etc. negatives are a feature of some dialects. That's pretty common, but I'm not sure if it is the standard form in those dialects or if it is just a possible structure. In other words, I'm not sure if in those dialects "I don't give anything to...

Koto wrote: I'm not sure but I guess "anymore of " is American and "any more of" is more like British?Hi KotoI can only repeat what I said in my previous post: anymore refers to time. E-mails are not time. The following extract is from the Random House Webster's Dictionary (an American...

< Well, first off, what are these "non-standard" forms of English of which you speak? There are certainly unprestigious and stigmatized dialects, but each of them have their own rules of grammar. > Yes, I think most of us here know that, Marv. The term "non-standard" has taken on...

Inchoateknowledge wrote:'This is the watch as I lost' -- this sentence is false.No, it is dialect. In some dialects as = that ------- as : THAT -- used to introduce a noun clause and now dialect except in certain negative expressions with know, say, or see that have wide usage in...

%He isn't ill, isn't he? The above sentence is quoted from The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge University Press 2002. The symbol % indicates the status of the following example: He hadn't many friends. According to the second edition of Practical English Usage,...