Monday 6 August 2018

Well, I don't know nothing !

Few means 'not many' but if preceded by 'a', the whole meaning is reversed.
Not in colloquial sense but in loose utterances , this minor aberration occurs like in US two negatives are wrongly used but isn't wrongly understood when it is stated 'well, I don't know nothing ', implying he doesn't know anything . A researcher justified even this so called aberration to be erroneously perceived as an aberration. Do you know, what logic he gave. He asked one to take down the sentence. It was taken down as below :-
'well, I don't know nothing'.
The researcher said, you have committed the error , in taking it down wrongly , skipping a coma, which is not uttered, but is only implied by the pause. So he corrected the wronly taken down sentence, this way, 'well, I don't know , nothing'.
And lo and behold, the aberration got mitigated.
But in case of few and a few, this kind of circumlocution might not seem effective.

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