"They told me I should come down to cousin, but a flatly refused, I ain't dumb down nothing." from the song by American rapper. Why is double negation used here? Just to be closer to the lower level of society? And in what meaning is

Liat. If you insist the sentence is correct, can you please educate me which one of the following definitions meets the grammatical requirement of the sentence in question? For the benefit of a slight doubt, I will invite other's opinions.

Of course, your sentence is grammatically correct. Who tells you that the people in English speaking countries are not using the phrasal verb "to pick up" in their speech? However, my native language is not the English language

for showing the competence that makes Americans hopeful he might pull it off . Is 'that' a relative pronoun for 'the competence'? Is 'hopeful' an adjective? What does it mean? I hope you don't mind my

Where can I find online discussion of American English speech patterns that create problems for foreign listeners. I am not referring to phrasal verbs or idioms, but to the colloquial style of actual speech. I have noticed that Americans often

In modern English the preposition usually comes at the end ... I've never noticed any special rule concerning long propositions. Your typos are Freudian, Einde. In my strict early days of teaching HS English I used to remind students that it

As I've said before, and as you can gather from ... in that sense has no status as a distinct verb. When I was taking my CELTA training, I challenged the notion that "want to" is a phrasal verb. Surely, I ... be interested to learn

As I've said before, and as you can gather from American usage guides, the word "use" with the sense "make ... as if it's a grammatical unit and the word "use" in that sense has no status as a distinct verb. When I

Does anyone have any comments about this? Makes very interesting reading from a right-pond perspective. Of course, we Brits are all brought up knowing everything there is to know about AmE, chiefly because we spend most of our formative years

Django Cat wrote on 11 Jun 2004: Not in this nation. And not in the USA. Well, this could probably easily get into one of those Micks type debates on 'it is because I say so' lines. No, it isn't one of those debates. I'm not