Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 March 12

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March 12

Double negative

Í don't hate nobody —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.218.174.248 (talk) 00:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

That's really a refreshing attitude to have! --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:00, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Unless the double negative is to be taken literally. —Angr 07:17, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, at least its good to see someone who is consistant in their beliefs, regardless... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 14:51, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

No teacher ain't never learned me nothing! A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:16, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

There's more to this statement than may meet some eyes. The OP was not talking about him/herself, but about some entity named Í, possibly a Spaniard. -- JackofOz (talk) 19:43, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Could be a tepid fan of a Western film character. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:46, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Double negatives that form positives (such as "He is not unhappy") are not ungrammatical.151.213.160.254 (talk) 00:47, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Not that you said this, but just to remove ambguity, "He is not unhappy" is not equivalent in meaning to "He is happy". Happiness is not a binary condition, and there are degrees on the happiness scale between merely "happy" and "unhappy". Such grammatical constructs are called litotes. The other form of double negative, which is the emphasized-double-negative, such as "I don't hate nobody", also has shades of meaning quite different from either "I hate nobody" or "I don't hate anybody". Overly simplistic elementary school grammar textbooks would have you believe that the "I don't hate nobody" construct logically means "I hate everybody", but the laws of language are not identical to the laws of logic. It also does not mean the same as "I don't hate anybody", as the use of multiple negatives is a common means of emphasis; in most common English dialects the double negative form has a much stronger feel than the single negative form. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 01:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I was going to direct the OP to Double negative, but unfortunately that is a dreadful article, which contains myths such as "In Standard English, double negatives are usually understood to resolve to a positive". I may have a go at improving it some time, but what it really needs is most of it removing, as in every language other than English multiple expressions of negation are unexceptional and really do not need listing. --ColinFine (talk) 00:37, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Southern American English doesn't have it; but double (or triple) negatives are quite common in that. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 05:27, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

African American Vernacular English does have a short section on negation, though. Rmhermen (talk) 13:09, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Question for a Latin speaker/writer

Hey - Just out of curiosity, how would one say the following phrase in Latin: "If you're not big, compensate"? (Compensate in the sense of "make up for it"). I'd ask my friend from college, but I don't seem to have a valid email address for her anymore. Thanks! --Brasswatchman (talk) 04:10, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

How about "Si magnitudini desis, compensa"? Adam Bishop (talk) 08:37, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't assume that the relevant sense of compensare existed in Latin. —Tamfang (talk) 08:08, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, the Oxford Latin Dictionary gives as second definition of compensare "to counterbalance, make up for (a deficiency, etc.), make good in another way, offset". Pallida  Mors 11:37, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, Lewis and Short gives that definition as well... Adam Bishop (talk) 13:54, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Was/Were

"The bodies were surrounded by pools of fake blood, which was soaking into the carpet." Before 'soaking', should it be was or were? Or is there a choice, depending on the emphasis of the sentence? Black Carrot (talk) 06:12, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

My first thought was that "were" would be unnatural though possible. But now that I look at it more closely, sure, either is possible. As you say, depends on the emphasis.--Rallette (talk) 06:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Was it the blood that was soaking into the carpet, or the pools of blood that were soaking into the carpet? Hmm. Possible either way, but if the bodies were lying on the same carpet, or even on different carpets but still close together, you'd normally conceptualise all the blood as a single entity, and talk about the blood soaking, not the pools soaking. I'd write "was". Unless you went on to talk about the pools soaking in at different rates because the bodies were on different carpets, one of which was scotchguarded and resisted absorption, or something weird like that. -- JackofOz (talk) 07:18, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Does it have anything to do with the restrictiveness of the which-clause? If you left out the comma (making the clause restrictive) then was seems unnatural. But as is, it seems like the "which was ..." could apply to the fake blood or the pools of fake blood. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:17, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

If re-writing is an option, just say "pools of fake blood soaking into the carpet". —Angr 15:04, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Apparently "was is first person singular past tense, and were is second person singular past tense, and all forms of the plural past tense." no idea if that makes this any clearer? 194.221.133.226 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:40, 12 March 2009 (UTC).

The ambiguity is ... what was soaking into the carpet ... the "pools" or the "blood"? If "pools" ... you would use were soaking into the carpet. If "blood" ... you would use was soaking into the carpet. Also -- if the latter is the concept being communicated -- I believe that you use the word "that" instead of "which" (and no comma). (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:22, 12 March 2009 (UTC))

Not so sure about that last bit, Joseph. That would be used where you're discriminating between "the blood that was soaking into the carpet" and "the blood that wasn't soaking into the carpet", for example -- JackofOz (talk) 19:39, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I am not sure myself. Quite frankly, I can never really get the "that versus which" rules straight ... and I have more or less given up on ever trying to grasp them. For the poster's sentence, my gut told me "that" was the appropriate word (over "which"). But -- yeah -- don't quote me. "That versus which" distinction drives me crazy. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 14:33, 13 March 2009 (UTC))

It is very tricky. So much so that Fowler goes into chapter and verse about it, full of qualifications, including the point that theory and practice are not necessarily the same. Having read it, one is not necessarily much wiser. But one of his points bears mentioning: ... if writers would agree to regard "that" as the defining relative pronoun, and "which" as the non-defining, there would be so much gain in both lucidity and ease. His examples are: "Each made a list of books that had influenced him" and "I always buy his books, which have influenced me greatly". He still insists on there being a comma before the "which" in a non-defining clause. You'll see examples of these types of sentences in real life where the "which" and the "that" are swapped, but Fowler's advice is well worth following imo, if you lack confidence. (Also remember that native speakers don't use "which" for humans - it's always "who/whom"; many experts disallow "that" for humans, but others think it's ok.) -- JackofOz (talk) 20:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

See http://multilingualbible.com/matthew/6-9.htm, where the Authorized King James Version is eighth in the first column. -- Wavelength (talk) 23:54, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

As I said, native speakers don't use "which" to refer to humans. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:10, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Further Russian questions

There are some words that my Russian co-workers keep repeating over and over again, and I would very much like to know what they mean. Because I have next to no knowledge of Russian, and I have only heard these words spoken, I have to go by approximate phonetical spelling. One word sounds like dokha and is used at the beginning of a sentence to attract attention. Other words sound like krasataa (possibly two separate words) and like the English word "yeast". I once picked up from correlation that it meant "this" but I realised I was wrong, as "this" in Russian is eto or something. And I could swear they keep repeating raz, dva, dri which I know is Russian for "one, two, three", but who keeps repeating such a thing? JIP | Talk 23:49, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The word красота (pronounced like kra-sa-TA) means "beauty" when used as a noun, but it can also be used as an interjection meaning "wonderful!", "great!", "splendid!". The "yeast" word is undoubtedly есть (yest'), which is the sole remnant of the present tense of the verb "to be", which, apart from this word, is not used in modern Russian. It crops up in various expressions. For example, the usual way of saying "I have <something>" is "У меня есть <something>" (U menya yest' ...), which literally means "With me is <something>". "Dokha"? Not sure what that one is. And I don't know why they keep counting to 3 (the word for 3 is три (tri), btw. not dri). Hope that helps. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

"Dokha" might be "давай" (davay), which means approximately "c'mon" and is a quite frequent exclamation. No such user (talk) 09:35, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea if that translates into Russian, but building tradesmen (mainly Slavic speakers of various nationalities) in the block I live in used the phrase "eins, zwei, drei" (German equivalent for 1,2,3) to mean something like "quicksmart" or "let us get on with it". --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 10:43, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know Russian either, but in Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation of The Master and Margarita, 'eins, zwei, drei' itself is used with that meaning. Algebraist 13:03, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

My wife is Russian, and she uses "davai... raz, dva, tri" to mean "come on, get on with it", usually when trying to get the nipper to do something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.18.23.2 (talk) 13:13, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm still struggling to see how "davai" could appear to sound like "dokha". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:06, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

This is a crazy thought, but is of the guys in question named Andrei? Then this could be "Andryukha" or "..Dryukha" (in a more clipped version) which would be an appropriate way to attract attention of an Andrei:) Or, if he is named Anton, that could be "Tokha", although "Tosha" is more typical. --71.142.88.137 (talk) 02:09, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Might be something like that. I keep thinking of "Ага!" (the same meaning and close to the same pronunciation as our interjection "Aha!"), which can sound as if there's a preceding consonant in quick speech. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:46, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, but no, this dokha (at least it sounds like it) remains a mystery. None of the guys is named Andrei or Anton. And davai is one of the Russian words I have heard so often I recognise it whenever I hear it. This dokha word is entirely unlike it. Keep in mind I am only going by hearing, I have never seen the words spelled. It could be doha (as Finnish does not have a kh sound, I have difficulty distinguishing between h and kh) or a smilar sounding word, but again, nowhere near davai. JIP | Talk 21:18, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Дока (dóka, n., male or female) is a colloquial word for "expert, authority". The more standard word is знатoк (znatók). I've not seen доха (dokha) used, but it could conceivably be a pejorative form of дочь (doch' - daughter). -- JackofOz (talk) 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I still don't think that's it. It doesn't sound like doka, more like doha or dokha. And as my coworkers are both equally skilled IT experts and both married men, I don't think either of them would call the other "authority" or "daughter". The way they use it as a beginning of a sentence makes me think it means something like "hey, look at this" or "hey, you know?" or something, but that's just my guess. JIP | Talk 20:23, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm stumped. Can you ask them what the word means? I'm sure they wouldn't mind. Russians are known for their love of intellectual enquiry, and would probably appreciate your taking an interest in their language. I'd really love to find out. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:15, 19 March 2009 (UTC)