{"id":1758,"date":"2010-11-18T09:57:08","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T16:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1758"},"modified":"2010-11-18T09:57:08","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T16:57:08","slug":"math-meets-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1758","title":{"rendered":"Math meets English"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was listening to a song the other day.\u00a0 The lyrics went, “I won’t do you no harm.”<\/em><\/strong> And the writer in me kept correcting <\/span>questioning his meaning because he used the double negative. \u00a0\u00a0 Knowing that two negatives cancel each\u00a0 other out, according to English Calss, making his meaning.. “I will do you harm.”<\/em> I could only sigh at the songwriter who chose colloquialism over good grammar.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But my inner bitch <\/span>mediator complained about why the existence of the double negative is such an issue?\u00a0 After all you don’t see the use of two positives canceling each\u00a0 other out. (… can’t… think… of… example…. argh! ah, skip it.)
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then I realized the double negative exists because of Math.\u00a0 Yes, evil Math… influencing all aspects of our society.\u00a0 Tormenting parents, students and teachers alike in its struggle to pound its logic into your head.\u00a0 I realize it’s logic has seeped into the English language.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now I wrote about some of the insanity of the English language in a previous blog.\u00a0 Irrigular Verbage<\/a> So I won’t have to go into this again.\u00a0 But I didn’t realize at the time the insidious influence of Logical Math.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In English, a double negative cancels itself out. A little bit like two similar functions on either side of an equation do.\u00a0 Ahh, but is isn’t an equation… its a number “sentence”!\u00a0 Just like 2 + 3 = 5. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Ok.. so follow this logic into English.\u00a0 What is -2 + -3?\u00a0 Why its -5!\u00a0 So in Math a double negative increases the amount of negative.\u00a0 This explains so much about why the double negative dilemma even exists.\u00a0 People are using it to increase the emphasis of what they’re trying to say!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now who does this the most?\u00a0 Men.\u00a0 And who’s good at Math… men.\u00a0 Need I say more!
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was listening to a song the other day.\u00a0 The lyrics went, “I won’t do you no harm.” And the writer in me kept correcting questioning his meaning because he used the double negative. \u00a0\u00a0 Knowing that two negatives cancel … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3247,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions\/3247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}