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Message-ID: <496C8482.3060503@davidnewall.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:39:38 +1030
From: David Newall <davidn@...idnewall.com>
To: Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
CC: Daolong Wang <ahlongxp@...il.com>,
David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, bhutchings@...arflare.com,
lizf@...fujitsu.com, qhfeng.kernel@...il.com,
netdev@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] NET: fix wrong English expression in comments
Alan Cox wrote:
>> "Don't add nothing," is not a colloquialism; it's just bad grammar. The
>>
>
> It's a matter of dialect. For historical reasons English emerged from a
> mix of languages and cultures (even within the UK). In some of the
> originating languages and areas a double negative is emphatic in others
> it negates the negation. Thus it is a bad idea when using globally - as
> nobody is quite sure what you mean.
There's an amusing story about a lecture, in which the professor was
saying that in many cultures, in many languages, a double negative
becomes a positive, but that nowhere did a double positive become a
negative. From the back of the class drifted a bored, "yeah, yeah!"
--
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