Dear Expert

[rivka]

In Hebrew and Yiddish, in and on are not distinct/separate as they are in English.

[Dobie]

Chinese uses no prepositions for dates and times.

Japanese uses the particle "ni" for specific points in time. (It's the same particle that means, "in," "at," and "to" in other contexts). You use it in phrases like "I'm leaving AT 8:00" or "I was born ON June 1st" or "He died IN 1980." But you wouldn't use any particle to say things like "tomorrow," "today," "this year," etc.

So there's your input from some non Indo-European languages.

So if a samurai tells you the time does that make him one of them?

[Annie Subjunctive]

Chinese uses no prepositions for dates and times.

Japanese uses the particle "ni" for specific points in time. (It's the same particle that means, "in," "at," and "to" in other contexts). You use it in phrases like "I'm leaving AT 8:00" or "I was born ON June 1st" or "He died IN 1980." But you wouldn't use any particle to say things like "tomorrow," "today," "this year," etc.

So there's your input from some non Indo-European languages.

So if a samurai tells you the time does that make him one of them?

How did I know that joke was coming?

Yes, yes it does. It also includes all Chinese people ever, for whom ni is the second-person pronoun.

[Dobie]

I never knew all Chinese people had knighthoods.

[Annie Subjunctive]

[Dobie]

[Annie Subjunctive]

You know how right can mean both the relative direction and also something that you're entitled to? I had the mind-blowing realization while trying to get to sleep that this same pair exists in both French and Spanish, though it doesn't seem that the words are related at all to the English right. (They're droit/droit and derecho/derecho). Why would the words mean both distinct things in all three languages if the words don't seem to be related? (Well, the French and Spanish seem like they could easily be related but the English seems really different)

Also weird is that both droit and derecho can also mean "straight, unturning," though in Spanish you distinguish when giving directions by saying al derecho for "straight" and a la derecha for "on the right."

How did this whole mess of words come about? (I could etymonline it but I thought Jonathon might have some more thorough info from the OED so I'm not going to spoil the surprise for myself)

[Annie Subjunctive]

And then there's the separate meaning of "morally correct." Is that related too?

[Jonathon]

You know how right can mean both the relative direction and also something that you're entitled to? I had the mind-blowing realization while trying to get to sleep that this same pair exists in both French and Spanish, though it doesn't seem that the words are related at all to the English right. (They're droit/droit and derecho/derecho).

Spoiler alert: They are in fact related. The French and Spanish words come from the Latin directus, which is a participial form of dirigo, from dis + rego. Rego comes from the PIE *h₃reǵ-. This was suffixed and became **rehtaz in Proto-Germanic, and from thence became right in Modern English.

BAM.

Why would the words mean both distinct things in all three languages if the words don't seem to be related? (Well, the French and Spanish seem like they could easily be related but the English seems really different)

Also weird is that both droit and derecho can also mean "straight, unturning," though in Spanish you distinguish when giving directions by saying al derecho for "straight" and a la derecha for "on the right."

How did this whole mess of words come about? (I could etymonline it but I thought Jonathon might have some more thorough info from the OED so I'm not going to spoil the surprise for myself)

Supposing that they weren't related but shared the same patterns of meaning, I'd chalk it up to cultural diffusion, probably from the Romans to surrounding cultures. There could also be some universal (or at least widespread) natural metaphors driving the development of some meanings.

[Jonathon]

And then there's the separate meaning of "morally correct." Is that related too?

Yes. As far as I can tell, they're all related, though I'll have to elaborate later when I get home.

[Annie Subjunctive]

Crazy!

[rivka]

Possibly related to the notion that right = good and left = evil?

[BlackBlade]

Crazy!

I know right?

[Jonathon]

Wiktionary says that the meaning of *h₃reǵ- was 'to straighten, to right oneself', 'right', and 'just'. I'm guessing that 'straight' was the original meaning and that the others are metaphorical extensions. Straight = good and therefore correct or just. The right hand came to be called so because of the sense that it was the correct hand to use. The Online Etymology Dictionary says that right was not used this way in Old English; the word for the right hand was swiþra, meaning 'stronger'.

[rivka]

This is a "how come?" question.

My original sentence started:

Once we have all the missing forms, we will be able to

Then I decided it needed to be prefaced with "only", and that meant I had to rearrange the order of "we will", resulting in

Only once we have all the missing forms, will we be able to

I'm fairly certain that's correct, but my question is why? What does adding the "only" do to the sentence structure?

[Jonathon]

You have discovered subject-auxiliary inversion, specifically negative inversion. SAI occurs most frequently in questions, but it also occurs after negative phrases and clauses, with some uses of the subjunctive ("Had I known . . .") and in some clauses with than, as, or so ("so did Bob"). In this case, the only clause is negative because it essentially means "in no case except this one".

Explaining that such phrases cause inversion is easier than explaining why. It's apparently an ongoing problem in theories of syntax. But the constructions is apparently a holdover from earlier English syntax (known by linguists as V2, because the verb is always the second constituent in the sentence) that is still alive and well in other Germanic languages. In V2 languages, the nominal word order is subject-verb-object, but you can bump the subject from its slot but putting another constituent in its place, whether an adverb, object, or some other kind of complement. The verb stays put, and the subject moves after it. You can still see it sometimes in Early Modern English, but today it only appears (outside of questions) in a limited range of constructions, and it now requires creating an auxiliary verb if there isn't one ("I never kicked puppies" > "Never did I kick puppies").

P.S.: I'd also take out the comma after the fronted negative clause, but I'm having a hard time explaining why it would need it in your original but not in the revised sentence.

[BlackBlade]

Only once we have all the missing forms, will we be able to,

That's the perfect construction in Mandarin. Not that you probably care.

[rivka]

P.S.: I'd also take out the comma after the fronted negative clause, but I'm having a hard time explaining why it would need it in your original but not in the revised sentence.

On reflection, I agree. With both parts.

And thanks! Very interesting.

[Jonathon]

You're very welcome!

[BlackBlade]

So "ain't" is a contraction of "am not" but how? Other contractions like "don't" "isn't" and "can't" all make sense. But how do you get 'am' from 'ai'? Same question for won't how did we get 'wo' from 'will'?

[Annie Subjunctive]

I think in that case it's phonetic, based on the way people sad it rather than the way they wrote it.

[rivka]

Merriam-Webster.com says it's originally a contraction of "are not", which leads more naturally into "ain't".

It also points out that it is used in place of all of the following: am not, are not, is not, have not, has not, do not, does not, did not.

[Tante Shvester]

Dear Expert,

When did Dad and Daddy surpass Pop and Papa?  The latter seem more old fashioned to me.  Was it after WWII?  Is it a baby boomer thing?  Why would it change?

[pooka]

I don't quite understand why "are not" becomes "ain't" but I know that if you pronounce it /arent/ you're still saying two syllables but if you say /arnt/ it is a pretty heavy syllable.  The last three consonants are all coronal, a liquid, a nasal and a voiceless stop.  My guess is that the liquid became a glide either because it was "easier" for a disparate sound to be placed than a more similar one due to sonority gradient, or it is assimilating to the vowel.  Though I have to admit I never memorized vowel features, since most of my phonology was in Arabic. 

[pooka]

:cautiously:
Are all uses (with different person/number) of ain't equally acceptable as negative helping verbs in... let's say in spoken American English like would appear in a TV show where the character is not supposed to be anything unusual (like an android)?  Is it less standard paired with plurals?  In Black Vernacular English it can apparently be used as a general purpose negative marker.  

Having looked around a bit I'm not finding a hit for the phonemic extraction of ain't.