Quotes from work

[Jonathon]

If it's a happy coincidence for you, do you want to edit this book for me? This guy's prose is flat and lifeless, and he starts every other sentence with "thus" or "hence" or "therefore". It's really tedious.

Also, that's the entirety of the discussion about why Theravada did not take in China.

[dkw]

If it's a happy coincidence for you, do you want to edit this book for me?

Nope.  The happy part was that the giggle cleared my head a little.

[Jonathon]

Well, I guess that's worth something.

[Marianne Dashwood]

The Chinese enjoyed life and families, and so the Theravada form [of Buddhism], which required the ascetic life, was not especially attractive to them.

As opposed to all those other cultures that hate life and families.

Will you please write this in the margin? Please?

[BlackBlade]

The Chinese enjoyed life and families, and so the Theravada form [of Buddhism], which required the ascetic life, was not especially attractive to them.

As opposed to all those other cultures that hate life and families.

Will you please write this in the margin? Please?

Jonathon: 請接受她的建議！

I love how google translate (which I didn't use to write that) says, "Please accept her proposal" as the translation if I omit the exclamation mark. With the exclamation mark in, it translates to "Please accept her suggestions!"  Apparently one cannot exclaim one's proposals in Chinese.

[rivka]

". . . or do we minus the amounts . . ."

aaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

[Jonathon]

 

[BlackBlade]

Oh man, that grates on the mind.

Edit: In other news a customer said, "I can't hardly hear you." I very nearly corrected her grammar.

[Porter]

"I can't hardly hear you." is perfectly understandable.

[Jonathon]

True, but it's also widely considered incorrect. Intelligibility is not the only determiner of whether something is considered correct or standard.

But I'd recommend against correcting a customer's grammar.

[BlackBlade]

"I can't hardly hear you." is perfectly understandable.

If the person was indicating that the value representing their ability to hear me was anything but "hardly" then yes.

edit: But most people don't mean that.

[Jonathon]

I think Porter is saying that you knew what was intended, even though it may not logically match what they said.

[rivka]

Intelligibility is not the only determiner of whether something is considered correct or standard.

And thank goodness for that.

[Jonathon]

Could you elaborate? I'm not trying to trap you or anything—I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

[Porter]

Yes, I know that it's widely considered incorrect.   If somebody wrote that for an English paper, I'd absolutely advise them to change it.  But in spoken English, I think it's a perfectly reasonable variation.  

I disagree with the notion that a double negative must logically mean a positive.

[Jonathon]

Outside of an instructional situation (teacher, parent, etc.), I think it would be extremely obnoxious to correct that sort of non-standard English phrasing.

I'd agree. There are few cases where it's acceptable to correct someone else's language.

I disagree with the notion that a double negative must logically mean a positive.

(Disclaimer: I'm by no means an expert in logic.) It depends on what your axioms are. Two negatives can mean a positive, and in standard English they often do, but there's usually contrastive stress applied: "I didn't not do my homework." But nonstandard varieties that use multiple negation don't usually do this—they just distribute the negation, without extra stress, throughout the sentence, like "I didn't do no homework." The first sentence might be represented as something like –(–(do homework)), while the second might be (–do) (–homework). There's no reason to assume that the first negative has to have scope over the whole phrase, thus cancelling out the second.

[rivka]

Could you elaborate? I'm not trying to trap you or anything—I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

That way lies arguments about whether that horrible jumbled paragraph (the one that was ubiquitous for a bit a few years back) really is or is not readable, and just how hard it is or is not to decode. There are, IMO, enough accepted-usage ways to say most things that there is no reason to argue for the acceptability of most incorrect usages simply because it is possible to decode what the speaker/writer probably meant. Intelligibility is far too subjective and slippery to be the only (or primary) question.

Outside of an instructional situation (teacher, parent, etc.), I think it would be extremely obnoxious to correct that sort of non-standard English phrasing.

I'd agree. There are few cases where it's acceptable to correct someone else's language.

I entirely agree. When I responded to the listserv post I quoted above (the "minus" one), I said nothing about her usage. I just vented here.

[Tante Shvester]

"I can't hardly hear you." is perfectly understandable.

Unless, of course, the reason they can't hardly hear is because there's a bad phone connection.

[Jonathon]

That way lies arguments about whether that horrible jumbled paragraph (the one that was ubiquitous for a bit a few years back) really is or is not readable, and just how hard it is or is not to decode. There are, IMO, enough accepted-usage ways to say most things that there is no reason to argue for the acceptability of most incorrect usages simply because it is possible to decode what the speaker/writer probably meant. Intelligibility is far too subjective and slippery to be the only (or primary) question.

I definitely agree that it's not the only question or even the primary one, as there are many possible sentences that are intelligible but not grammatical (in standard or any other English). And intelligibility isn't a binary feature but a whole spectrum. And intelligibility and grammaticality aside, there's the whole issue of style, which is a whole nother can of worms.

[rivka]

* rivka nods vigorously

[BlackBlade]

The reason it strikes me as bad usage is somebody who says, "I can't hardly hear you" is either saying they hear me just fine, or they can't hear me at all, not even hardly.

[Tante Shvester]

If someone says they can't hardly hear you, they are asking you to talk louder. To me, there is no confusion about that.

[BlackBlade]

I know that's what people mean. But if they want to say that, then they can say, "I can't hear you" or "I can hardly hear you". Mixing the phrases just creates a circumstance where the words don't actually mean what they appear to mean on the surface.

[Tante Shvester]

Only if you think about it too much.  I'd advise against thinking about it too much because it makes you look like a judgmental snob to whomever you correct.  Even if you are not a judgmental snob.

In any event, I think the proper idiom is "I CAIN'T hardly hear you", not "I CAN'T hardly hear you".  Not that I'd correct anyone on that.

[Jonathon]

Taylor: What you're essentially talking about is a mismatch between the locution and the illocution. That is, it's clear that the speaker meant one thing, even though their words literally mean another thing (given certain assumptions about how multiple negation works). And for your perlocution—how you receive it—you're favoring the literal rendering of the locution over the speaker's illocution. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but I think it's important to keep in mind that the literal meaning of an utterance is not the only guide to interpreting its meaning.