I’ve talked to the man in the moon and he said the sun rises and sets on the moon like it would if the sun orbits the moon. Same for the earth. Both orbit the moon. Face it.
And of cause there are 3 camps and alot of disagreements but essentially, the majority of scientists argue, like me, that it is the moon which is the center. You can always cite some fringe scientists arguing otherwise, that doesn’t change the general consensus.
I just today watch an episode where someone said “you are the thing I love most” to a person as if it was a sign or something but it’s just selective memory.
I’m sorry for being stupid I guess. We are all here to learn.
Not so strange actually. Sure, seen superficially, it seems that double negatives negate each other but that doesn’t fit the empirical data. Many languages do this in their standard variety and English does it in many local, social and historical varieties. I think Shakespeare did it too.
Spanish for example has “sin nada”, literally “without nothing” but meaning “with nothing”/ “without anything”.
So the linguistic consensus is that the negative is expressed more than once. Depending on the language this might be optional or not. Slavic languages have a negative prefix “ne-” on verbs and this is obligatory if a negative word (like never, nobody,…) is used in the sentence.
Arguably, since “anything” is only used in negative sentences, it is kind of part of the negative. You wouldn’t say “I have anything”, only “I don’t have anything”. Then again, it can be used in positive sentences like “I would do anything” with a slightly different meaning.
But let’s take “anymore”. “I can’t stand it anymore” is a common phrase but “I can stand it anymore” not so much. “anymore” is only used in negative sentences so the “not” is arguably redundant and therefore “not … anymore” is kind of a double negative.
And even that’s not true for all speakers of English. There are native speakers who would say “I go to town anymore” unironically.
Edit: I reread the comment you reacted to and to say it’s “to emphasize” is wrong. That argument would work better for “at all” for example. My point is that “double negative” isn’t as clear cut as it might seem to be at first glance. “I don’t know nothing” is a double negative for sure, “I don’t know anything at all” kind of in a way, “I don’t know anything” maybe a little bit.
Tbh prescriptivism has its place in official over regional communication and language learning. We wouldn’t understand each other if we were writing each in their local dialect and when you start learning a language, you don’t want to first need an overview of the dialect continuum.
That said, in unofficial writing it doesn’t matter as long as you write intelligible and advanced language learners should learn about varieties. I for example was tought British English at the start and in the 4th year, we learned about American English and the differences to British English.
Checks out ( lemmy.world )
xkcd #2898: Orbital Argument ( imgs.xkcd.com )
xkcd.com/2898...
He's more beak than bird ( startrek.website )
You ain't saw nothing ( lemmy.world )
xkcd #2852: Parameterball ( imgs.xkcd.com )
xkcd.com/2852...