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It's not pointless, see my other reply: > If what you want to say is, "Okay, Shakespeare used double negatives for emphasis, but he spoke a different dialect t
by Cushman 14y ago
It's not pointless, see my other reply:
> If what you want to say is, "Okay, Shakespeare used double negatives for emphasis, but he spoke a different dialect than I do, and in my dialect double negatives reverse meaning", that's a fine and fairly uncontroversial statement, in that it forces one to acknowledge that one speaks a dialect. If on the other hand you're trying to say, "Okay, but that was an old kind of English and English today is different," that's factually false.
- eridius 14y agoHow is it factually false? Standard english has in fact changed since Shakespeare's time. The link that derleth gave documents this fact.
- Cushman 14y agoThe point of this entire thread is that what you are calling "standard English" is not a thing. It's not what Shakespeare spoke and it's not what we speak. There is American Standard, the dialect primarily spoken on the news in the US and elsewhere, but that is one of dozens. Many of those, including the Elizabethan spoken by Shakespeare and ethnolects spoken my many millions of people today, employ double negatives for emphasis. You are trying to draw an old/new distinction which does not reflect reality.