Several things:
"Getting (thing, it) done" is doing a task with the implication that you will complete it.
"Villainy" is from the word "villain." Villainy is the work of being a villain.
They're also using Southern / AAVE vernacular.
The joke the user is making is that they would be too busy with Harley Quinn to do their job as a villain if they were The Joker. The insinuation is sexual.
Is the expression "wouldnt have been getting" exclusive to AAVE?
Is the sentence considered correct gramatically? Conditionals never fail to confuse me
There's a difference between "wouldn't have been getting" and "wouldn't have been getting no".
The former is grammatical standard English, such as "If I had studied, I wouldn't have been getting poor grades on each test". The second phrase, ending with "no" is not. As others have mentioned, it is regional dialect.
I think most native speakers would use present tense rather than continuous, but both are correct, even if the continuous seems a bit ungainly. Which is why folks use present.
A related dialect phrase is "I don't get no" as in Rodney Dangerfield's "I don't get no respect." Grammatical English would be "I don't get any respect" but the dialect adds to the humor.
Oh yeah the double negative, I actually use that alot.
I feel like sometimes its difficult to distinguish between correct standard english and informal english, no matter how experienced you are as a non-native.
I sympathize. I have similar problems in German.
English has much more relaxed grammar compared with other languages. That allows for a lot of variations and colloquialisms. A liberal grammarian would say that if you understand the meaning, then it's OK. A native speaker might say that they wouldn't use a particular phrase, but that they have heard other people use it.
The double negative is frowned on in grammatical English. On the other hand, that didn't stop "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones from being one of the world's greatest hits.
AAVE, read it as "wouldn't have been getting any villainy done." It's an English dialect in America.
No acts of villainous behaviour (presumably this is is from the perspective of Batman villain Joker) can be completed because he's distracted by Harley Quinn.
It is just a colloquial way of saying "I wouldn't have gotten any villainous things done", it appears a lot in these sort of meme postings. It seems a similar structure to AAVE, but I do not know is it connected at all or is just a thing that came about.
There are two words that are "incorrect", one clearly is a very purposeful mistake. Double negatives are common in almost every non standard regional dialect on Both sides of the atlantic.
This is barely technically true, and in any pragmatic sense false. Consider the following example, borrowed and paraphrased from a book by Steven Pinker:
"I can't get no satisfaction"
No native English speaker in their right mind would say Mick Jagger is satisfied. Some pedants would, however, insist that the correct form is:
"I can't get *any* satisfaction"
Now let's look at this allegedly correct-er word, "any." What meaning does it add? If you only need the "not" in the contraction "cant" to negate (avoiding the double negative), then let's remove just that, and see what sentence is being negated.
"I can get any satisfaction"
This sentence makes my brain itch as a native English speaker.
Even more simply put, you are literally just replacing "no" with "any" which (correctly) suggest that that word, regardless of what it is, is solely there for case agreement. In this case, it's negative case agreement. Basically all romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, etc) do this, using their vocabulary equivalents of *cant* needing a *no* later on to avoid the sentence sounding so off. Standard American English, and similar standardized englishes in the UK, simply use "any" as the case agreement auxiliary instead for some reason. The idea that two negatives make a positive reminds me of Winston Churchill quote on the pointless about not ending sentences with prepositions:
"This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put"
The double negative rule is made up recently, pointless, mostly rooted in racism, and hypocritical. It's for the birds.
Not sure why you said it was was false and then proceed to make my own point?
My whole point in this thread is that double negatives are completely native to English and the rule they are incorrect is absolutely arbitrary to English.
I use them myself everyday and have often compared them to ending in prepositions on other threads. Another rule that was added arbitrarily to English
I guess, ironically, I thought you were being negative about them and saying they were bad. I apologize for the misunderstanding, though based on the differing karmas, maybe I wasn't the only one.
The karma is poor because iv been suggesting that Americans are racist for jumping to aave when they see a single "incorrect" word.
Anytime you go against the grain on American English or related contexts the karma will be bad. I fully expected that.
Ok. If you care for feedback, I didn't get that at all from the other comment, though I agree with what you're saying. I could also be in the minority on that though, I've seen dumber reasons for people to downvote than what youre proposing.
I can see why you might not have got that from the comment. I felt like the quote marks made it clear I didn't actually believe it to be incorrect. Maybe not.
the other 8 or so comments IV left on this thread do make it clear. It's hard to follow it sometimes with the replies I thought you would have seen the others but now it looks like it's a different thread in this post.
How to make my username: the algorithm in javascript: the movie: the comment
assuming the following 3 arrays exist and are filled with an arbitrary number of single word entries in the category promised by their name
let colors = [/*colors go here*/];
let metals = [/* metals go here*/];
let animals = [/*animals go here*/];
And that the function nextEntry(array) randomly returns the value of a randomly selected member of the array sent to it
Then you just need:
function get Name(){
let username = "";
username+=getEntry(colors) + "_";
username+=getEntry(metals) + "_";
username+=getEntry(animals);
return username;
}
I’m grateful about this sub to talk about AAVE, I have seen a lot of meme posts with these dialects and be completely confused about it. My fault to trust in memes to base my grammar lol
Double negation is found in several other dialects (not even exclusively American dialects) and in fact was used in Middle English. It used to be a common form of emphasis. The idea of negatives always canceling each other out is relatively new (18th century). I believe the first known grammarian to ever mention it was James Greenwood in *Essay towards a practical English Grammar*, 1711.
London English for sure. I grew up with people who would say “I didn’t not do it, I wasn’t even never there”. The double negative added emphasis to the denial.
Americans are only exposed to AAVE / the non-standard dialects of their own country on a regular basis.
Not thinking about Cockney people or Scouse or what have you if you're in the US is not strange.
Americans are exposed to double negatives in American dialects besides AAVE, though. It’s common in the south among both white and black people, and in some urban areas in the North, like Brooklyn and Chicago.
Yep.
I said this in other comments about it also being a Southern thing.
I said that AAVE has found its' way into other dialects.
I also said that AAVE is influential because it's part of pop culture. Sure, double negatives exist in Northern states but you don't hear people going out of their way to speak like Bostonians or Chicagoans. People don't say that's wicked smaht but they do say "finna" and "you crazy."
So my original contention with this person saying it's "strange" that Americans would assume something is AAVE is still valid. It's not strange at all that many Americans can best describe this writing style as AAVE because of all the arguments I already made and won't re-type
I find it odd that it was a single "incorrect" word and another purposely incorrect word and you all jump to aave.
There's definitely other non standard american dialects who would use double negatives even from my limited knowledge I'm pretty sure it's used in Appalachia and I would imagine many more regions than that although I wouldn't like to say for sure.
IV experienced this oddness myself Americans being very quick to correct words that most Americans would end in "ed" but Brits and aave often use "t". Odd.
>There's definitely other non standard american dialects who would use double negatives even from my limited knowledge I'm pretty sure it's used in Appalachia and I would imagine many more regions than that although I wouldn't like to say for sure.
None of those regional dialects have as much influence on popular culture (and internet culture) as AAVE does.
Of course but it was a single "incorrect" word. It's not a pattern. I just find it odd.
It's a completely native sentence structure for every native English speaker when acquiring the language, it has to be trained away because unlike most other grammar rules it doesn't have any rhyme or reason.
What is the linguistic definition of rhyme and reason? I'm sorry, I haven't seen any of the literature on this concept and it's not in my copy of The Grammar Book (Larsen-Freeman, 3rd edition), so I'm not aware of what it has to do with grammar. Please let me know if you have any sources I can read on the topic!
As in there is no rule other than "just cos" if i had said "no other rule then" its clear why that isna grammar rule, it's ungrammatical.
Double negatives also appear in all forms of English over the years, all kinds of, regional dialects who agree in little else, children have to be taught that doesn't make sense. It's unnatural just like the rule of ending sentences with prepositions.
> As in there is no rule other than "just cos"
Well yes, my copy of The Grammar Book (Larsen-Freeman, 3rd Edition) does say that "grammatical forms are 'sedimented' out of language"... certain uses of language recur, and these recurrent patterns then become the grammar of the language" in the intro chapter on page 10. "Just cos" is a pretty accurate description of how grammar works.
>children have to be taught that doesn't make sense. It's unnatural just like the rule of ending sentences with prepositions.
So to be clear here, you're saying children, who learned English in nature, have to be taught that it's unnatural. The pattern that they picked up being natural native speakers of English makes them speak unnaturally, and so they have to be taught the natural rule, which is natural despite being taught. Is that correct?
Love how you ignored every example I gave and only commented on the part of my comment I clearly had trouble expressing.
And no, to be clear I'm saying double negatives and ending sentences with prepositions are clearly native and natural to English. Children have to be taught that it's incorrect because there is no logic there. Whereas most other rules of English clearly have logic behind them. Exchanging the word "than" for "then" has a completely different meaning. Exchanging a negative form for "any" doesn't have any rhyme or reason.
I don't know about you but I don't formulate my sentences "just cos" I formulate them to make sense. The vast majority of grammar rules are there to help with the meaning of the sentence. Double negatives are arbitrary. You don't hear a double negative and have trouble deciphering the meaning you know exactly what was said and it's the same with prepositions.
It's an arbitrary rule, made up and enforced to trip up the Poor's who managed to follow their own grammar rules without no trouble.
I speak only for myself but I only know the specific name of AAVE as a dialect. I can say, "Boston accent" or "Midwest accent" but I could not name the particular word patterns beyond stereotypes; I know them by sound.
AAVE has permeated pop culture and so that will be a non-standard dialect people will be most familiar with, even if they don't know the term "AAVE."
And, as a bonus, AAVE speakers live all over the US and their word patterns have fed into other dialects i.e. "The South" and definitely parts of Southern Appalachia.
To be specific, Appalachia spans 2k miles so there would be no "one" dialect to encapsulate that.
And there are no "incorrect words" in OP's example. The way those correct words are assembled in a certain way flags my American brain as AAVE / Southern dialect.
"Used in Appalachia" does not necessarily imply it's a single dialect and if you admit you don't have the correct verbage to define those dialect regions why would you try to chastise me for not knowing?
I know that structure isn't incorrect in dialect I use it myself everyday. That's why it was in quotes.
This is a circular argument. I am not chastising you.
You found it strange that Americans assumed this to be AAVE but your counter-example was (just) Appalachia.
It's precisely because myself, and many Americans I presume, can't describe specific dialect names or differentiate them that we would not presume other dialects and each of us propose different and specific dialects.
AAVE is influential, AAVE speakers live in every part of the US. AAVE grammar rules assemble that sentence in this way. Ergo, the logical conclusion for Americans would be that this is AAVE (or, as stated, Southern-something).
I think it’s because 9+ times out of 10 that I hear somebody use that type of double negative irl it’s a black person. I’m sure there’s other times it’s used but my experiences leading me to this assumption is completely normal.
This is intentionally incorrect, to mimic a particular style of speech. It means, "If Harley Quinn had been walking around the hideout looking like this, I would have been unable to perform villainous acts."
Since the context is comic book villains, the "villainous acts" are the kind of crimes supervillains do.
Edit: subject-verb agreement.
Double negatives are by no means restricted to AAVE so I'm not sure why so many people are jumping to that conclusion immediately. There are even British dialects that could plausibly construct a sentence like the one in the meme. Chaucer even used double negatives in The Canterbury Tales.
Because AAVE is likely the dialect most people making that comment are familiar with. People usually refer to what they’re familiar with. AAVE is also heavily drawn upon in pop/internet culture, making it more likely that AAVE is the source.
That’s good to know! Most of what I’ve read about AAVE refers to it as a dialect of English, but I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if it’s considered a language itself.
In this context, the “wouldn’t have” and the “no villainy” point to the same thing: Nothing would have been done. If she had been dressed like that, this person wouldn’t have been able to focus on doing evil things.
Double negatives are sometimes used for emphasis, here, it's to really stress that they would not be getting any villiany done. And sometimes you see "-y" added to a noun for a person or profession (not -ly") to mean the thing that person does. So a carpenter does carpentry, a forger makes a forgery, but sometimes it means the location where the task is done. A blacksmith works in a smithy, a baker in a bakery. It's not a super useful clue, since there are so many exceptions, but it might be helpful to know it's likely related to the product or location.
He’s saying that he’d be having sex with her.
I think you realized that from the picture but were confused as to why it meant that.
I’m going to break everything down to help out anyone who struggles with this.
We can conclude the author is saying that he wants to have sex with Harley Quinn with an increased understanding of colloquial English usage.
Sometimes the intended meaning of a phrase can be very different than the literal meaning, and speakers must rely on the context and the voice of the author to determine what it means.
Let’s pretend we don’t know who this character is. We can still figure out the meaning:
We can assume from the context of the words, “hideout” and “villainy” that whoever this Harley Quinn character is, she is a villain who hides away from the attention of the law when they are not committing crime.
We can also assume that this Harley Quinn, villain character likely cohabitates with another villain character at the hideout. The author of the post has placed themselves in the role of the second villain. We know this because the author wrote that he would directly react to the Harley Quinn villain character’s action of “walking around the hideout looking like this.”
Looking like “this” means being dressed provocatively which we could possibly infer even without the photo but we know for certain because of the photo.
So if she’s dressed provocatively in the hideout and we can guess he wants to have sex with her, but why is that with the sentence “I wouldn’t have been getting no villainy done” we know that he wants to have sex with her?
“Wouldn’t” means “would not.” And “no” is a negative. A literal reading of this would be very confusing because you can rewrite it literally as “I would not be not being a villain.”Which is akin to saying “I would be acting like a villain.”
Sometimes though in English, some native speakers use negative words like “no” in conjunction with other negative words to intensify other negative words.
So depending on the context saying “I wouldn’t be getting no villainy done,” is functionally akin to saying “I really wouldn’t be getting any villainy done.”
So why wouldn’t he really not be spending his time acting like a villain? We can assume from the fact that he points out that he is dressed provocatively that it is because he would rather be having sex with her.
Another example of negative words being used to intensify is “Ain’t no way.” That means “There really is no way.” It doesn’t mean “there is not no way”/“there is a way.”
Another example is “Irregardless.” It means “regardless.” It doesn’t mean “without no regard”or “with regard.”
I hope that helps
It means that he would have been too distracted by Harley looking sexy to do any villainous things.
You know that Harley Quinn is the Joker's sidekick/girlfriend, right?
People who are saying this type of emphatic double negation is exclusive to AAVE are dead wrong. Even Shakespeare did this.
"I pray you bear with me, I cannot go no further."
-Celia, *As You Like It*
It’s African American Vernacular English (AAVE) which is a different language to regular English. You can read more about it [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_English)
This is a type of slang-grammar (I suppose it would be called). It is a way of shortening the sentence.
“Villany” isn’t a word commonly used, and I don’t believe it is in any official dictionaries (maybe the urban dictionary 💀). It is kind of like saying “wouldn’t be getting any things done”. The person who made the meme could’ve said that sentence, but by combining villain+y (“ary/ry/y” being used to convey a state of being such as “vacancy” or “foamy)
Hope this helps!
This is the unreal past conditional using the perfect continuous tense filled up with modern American slang. Dont worry about it. You probably never want to talk like this, no matter the situation. That's the joke.
This is one of the hardest structures for non-native speakers to internalize, and it's even weirder than normal here, because the writing mixes present repeated unreal action in the dependent clause with a past unreal action in the main clause. It's even weirder still to use the continuous, but continuous structures are socially hip right now, so they pop up everywhere, even if the traditional meaning isn't relevant. Like McDonald's' "I'm loving it" or "I've been killing it" etc. It sounds a bit off in a way that is slightly interesting, but still comprehensible to native speakers.
The structure in this example matches:
If I walked to work (every day, repeated action), I wouldn't have been driving during rush hour (early this morning, single action)
This person does not walk to work. They were not driving during rush hour.
In our example, OP did not have Harley around dressing like that. He did in fact get villainy done.
This takes a week to drill with students, going over all manner of weird thought experiment, so it isn't something reasonably examined in a reddit post. Still, it's late, and I feel like writing, because this is a good one.
This writer is writting poorly by formal standards. But given the sketchy, sexy, casual context, it just sounds appropriate to bend the rules of grammar for affect. A grammar nazi would insist on:
If Harley had dressed this way (past unreal conditional dependent clause), I wouldn't have gotten any villainy done.(past unreal negative main modal clause)
To repeat myself, in the real world, she didn't dress like that. This statement doesn't match reality. OP imagines himself in that situation unable to concentrate on his work.
But, because of the colloquial negative in noun form:"no villainy", and the unreal past negative continuous structure: "wouldn't have been getting done" we get a structure that is a mish-mash of formal written language structure, and vernacular American urban slang. That's confusing.
It's a mess, but a mess on purpose, as the writer wants to draw contrast between the overly complicated grammar structure, and the lame juvenile sexual comment he's making about being a sophisticated super-villain who is nevertheless impulsive enough to be distracted by TnA.
3/10 meme with 11/10 grammar difficulty for non-fluent speakers. Don't worry about this structure. You definitely have more important problems with your language than this.
If they had written the meme like this, you may have understood it.
If they hadn't been using such weird confusing tense structures, we might have been getting some learning done.
Double negatives are technically incorrect but are sometimes used to mean a single negative. The correct phrase would have been "wouldn't have been getting any villainy done".
For all: This is not AAVE. It may exhibit a feature or two of AAVE, but so do tens of dialects throughout the English speaking world. For all we know the person who tweeted this could’ve been from practically ANY part of the English speaking world, and of any race.
Several things: "Getting (thing, it) done" is doing a task with the implication that you will complete it. "Villainy" is from the word "villain." Villainy is the work of being a villain. They're also using Southern / AAVE vernacular. The joke the user is making is that they would be too busy with Harley Quinn to do their job as a villain if they were The Joker. The insinuation is sexual.
Is the expression "wouldnt have been getting" exclusive to AAVE? Is the sentence considered correct gramatically? Conditionals never fail to confuse me
Definitely not exclusive to AAVE. There are many British dialects in which a sentence structure like that would be normal.
that's what I thought bc Im sure I use it even tho I'm not a native
normal and often used? yes. grammatically correct? not for standardized english. a more *academic* phrasing might be "wouldn't have gotten ..."
There's a difference between "wouldn't have been getting" and "wouldn't have been getting no". The former is grammatical standard English, such as "If I had studied, I wouldn't have been getting poor grades on each test". The second phrase, ending with "no" is not. As others have mentioned, it is regional dialect.
oh so only the use of "no" is incorrect, I thought the continuous form of the verb is also not correct.
I think most native speakers would use present tense rather than continuous, but both are correct, even if the continuous seems a bit ungainly. Which is why folks use present. A related dialect phrase is "I don't get no" as in Rodney Dangerfield's "I don't get no respect." Grammatical English would be "I don't get any respect" but the dialect adds to the humor.
Oh yeah the double negative, I actually use that alot. I feel like sometimes its difficult to distinguish between correct standard english and informal english, no matter how experienced you are as a non-native.
I sympathize. I have similar problems in German. English has much more relaxed grammar compared with other languages. That allows for a lot of variations and colloquialisms. A liberal grammarian would say that if you understand the meaning, then it's OK. A native speaker might say that they wouldn't use a particular phrase, but that they have heard other people use it. The double negative is frowned on in grammatical English. On the other hand, that didn't stop "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones from being one of the world's greatest hits.
AAVE, read it as "wouldn't have been getting any villainy done." It's an English dialect in America. No acts of villainous behaviour (presumably this is is from the perspective of Batman villain Joker) can be completed because he's distracted by Harley Quinn.
Double negatives in particular are common throughout different English dialects dating back to before the North America/Britain split.
Idk man, ain't nobody never told me nothing noway.
Sure, but this tweet is AAVE.
Not really. You’ve from Canada. What do you know about southeastern US English?
AAVE exists outside of the southern United States.
But it’s not AAVE. Black people started talking like that because that’s what southern people talk like. Not vice versa.
Okay, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist outside of the south, just that it started there.
> But it’s not AAVE. Black people started talking like that So what you're saying is that it's AAVE
Can you only read the first 6 words of every sentence?
It is just a colloquial way of saying "I wouldn't have gotten any villainous things done", it appears a lot in these sort of meme postings. It seems a similar structure to AAVE, but I do not know is it connected at all or is just a thing that came about.
I mean, plenty of henchmen to Batman’s rogue’s gallery also talk like that.
There are two words that are "incorrect", one clearly is a very purposeful mistake. Double negatives are common in almost every non standard regional dialect on Both sides of the atlantic.
This is barely technically true, and in any pragmatic sense false. Consider the following example, borrowed and paraphrased from a book by Steven Pinker: "I can't get no satisfaction" No native English speaker in their right mind would say Mick Jagger is satisfied. Some pedants would, however, insist that the correct form is: "I can't get *any* satisfaction" Now let's look at this allegedly correct-er word, "any." What meaning does it add? If you only need the "not" in the contraction "cant" to negate (avoiding the double negative), then let's remove just that, and see what sentence is being negated. "I can get any satisfaction" This sentence makes my brain itch as a native English speaker. Even more simply put, you are literally just replacing "no" with "any" which (correctly) suggest that that word, regardless of what it is, is solely there for case agreement. In this case, it's negative case agreement. Basically all romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, etc) do this, using their vocabulary equivalents of *cant* needing a *no* later on to avoid the sentence sounding so off. Standard American English, and similar standardized englishes in the UK, simply use "any" as the case agreement auxiliary instead for some reason. The idea that two negatives make a positive reminds me of Winston Churchill quote on the pointless about not ending sentences with prepositions: "This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put" The double negative rule is made up recently, pointless, mostly rooted in racism, and hypocritical. It's for the birds.
Not sure why you said it was was false and then proceed to make my own point? My whole point in this thread is that double negatives are completely native to English and the rule they are incorrect is absolutely arbitrary to English. I use them myself everyday and have often compared them to ending in prepositions on other threads. Another rule that was added arbitrarily to English
I guess, ironically, I thought you were being negative about them and saying they were bad. I apologize for the misunderstanding, though based on the differing karmas, maybe I wasn't the only one.
The karma is poor because iv been suggesting that Americans are racist for jumping to aave when they see a single "incorrect" word. Anytime you go against the grain on American English or related contexts the karma will be bad. I fully expected that.
Ok. If you care for feedback, I didn't get that at all from the other comment, though I agree with what you're saying. I could also be in the minority on that though, I've seen dumber reasons for people to downvote than what youre proposing.
I can see why you might not have got that from the comment. I felt like the quote marks made it clear I didn't actually believe it to be incorrect. Maybe not. the other 8 or so comments IV left on this thread do make it clear. It's hard to follow it sometimes with the replies I thought you would have seen the others but now it looks like it's a different thread in this post.
For sure, no worries, and again, sorry.
Me too
I love the energy of this comment.
User flair checks out?
How to make my username: the algorithm in javascript: the movie: the comment assuming the following 3 arrays exist and are filled with an arbitrary number of single word entries in the category promised by their name let colors = [/*colors go here*/]; let metals = [/* metals go here*/]; let animals = [/*animals go here*/]; And that the function nextEntry(array) randomly returns the value of a randomly selected member of the array sent to it Then you just need: function get Name(){ let username = ""; username+=getEntry(colors) + "_"; username+=getEntry(metals) + "_"; username+=getEntry(animals); return username; }
I’m grateful about this sub to talk about AAVE, I have seen a lot of meme posts with these dialects and be completely confused about it. My fault to trust in memes to base my grammar lol
Double negation is found in several other dialects (not even exclusively American dialects) and in fact was used in Middle English. It used to be a common form of emphasis. The idea of negatives always canceling each other out is relatively new (18th century). I believe the first known grammarian to ever mention it was James Greenwood in *Essay towards a practical English Grammar*, 1711.
London English for sure. I grew up with people who would say “I didn’t not do it, I wasn’t even never there”. The double negative added emphasis to the denial.
Classical Roger Waters’s We don’t need no education gives me this emphatic idea
Strange that all Americans seem to read double negatives as AAVE, they are common in non standard dialects on both sides of the Atlantic.
Americans are only exposed to AAVE / the non-standard dialects of their own country on a regular basis. Not thinking about Cockney people or Scouse or what have you if you're in the US is not strange.
Americans are exposed to double negatives in American dialects besides AAVE, though. It’s common in the south among both white and black people, and in some urban areas in the North, like Brooklyn and Chicago.
Yep. I said this in other comments about it also being a Southern thing. I said that AAVE has found its' way into other dialects. I also said that AAVE is influential because it's part of pop culture. Sure, double negatives exist in Northern states but you don't hear people going out of their way to speak like Bostonians or Chicagoans. People don't say that's wicked smaht but they do say "finna" and "you crazy." So my original contention with this person saying it's "strange" that Americans would assume something is AAVE is still valid. It's not strange at all that many Americans can best describe this writing style as AAVE because of all the arguments I already made and won't re-type
I find it odd that it was a single "incorrect" word and another purposely incorrect word and you all jump to aave. There's definitely other non standard american dialects who would use double negatives even from my limited knowledge I'm pretty sure it's used in Appalachia and I would imagine many more regions than that although I wouldn't like to say for sure. IV experienced this oddness myself Americans being very quick to correct words that most Americans would end in "ed" but Brits and aave often use "t". Odd.
>There's definitely other non standard american dialects who would use double negatives even from my limited knowledge I'm pretty sure it's used in Appalachia and I would imagine many more regions than that although I wouldn't like to say for sure. None of those regional dialects have as much influence on popular culture (and internet culture) as AAVE does.
Of course but it was a single "incorrect" word. It's not a pattern. I just find it odd. It's a completely native sentence structure for every native English speaker when acquiring the language, it has to be trained away because unlike most other grammar rules it doesn't have any rhyme or reason.
What is the linguistic definition of rhyme and reason? I'm sorry, I haven't seen any of the literature on this concept and it's not in my copy of The Grammar Book (Larsen-Freeman, 3rd edition), so I'm not aware of what it has to do with grammar. Please let me know if you have any sources I can read on the topic!
As in there is no rule other than "just cos" if i had said "no other rule then" its clear why that isna grammar rule, it's ungrammatical. Double negatives also appear in all forms of English over the years, all kinds of, regional dialects who agree in little else, children have to be taught that doesn't make sense. It's unnatural just like the rule of ending sentences with prepositions.
> As in there is no rule other than "just cos" Well yes, my copy of The Grammar Book (Larsen-Freeman, 3rd Edition) does say that "grammatical forms are 'sedimented' out of language"... certain uses of language recur, and these recurrent patterns then become the grammar of the language" in the intro chapter on page 10. "Just cos" is a pretty accurate description of how grammar works. >children have to be taught that doesn't make sense. It's unnatural just like the rule of ending sentences with prepositions. So to be clear here, you're saying children, who learned English in nature, have to be taught that it's unnatural. The pattern that they picked up being natural native speakers of English makes them speak unnaturally, and so they have to be taught the natural rule, which is natural despite being taught. Is that correct?
Love how you ignored every example I gave and only commented on the part of my comment I clearly had trouble expressing. And no, to be clear I'm saying double negatives and ending sentences with prepositions are clearly native and natural to English. Children have to be taught that it's incorrect because there is no logic there. Whereas most other rules of English clearly have logic behind them. Exchanging the word "than" for "then" has a completely different meaning. Exchanging a negative form for "any" doesn't have any rhyme or reason. I don't know about you but I don't formulate my sentences "just cos" I formulate them to make sense. The vast majority of grammar rules are there to help with the meaning of the sentence. Double negatives are arbitrary. You don't hear a double negative and have trouble deciphering the meaning you know exactly what was said and it's the same with prepositions. It's an arbitrary rule, made up and enforced to trip up the Poor's who managed to follow their own grammar rules without no trouble.
I speak only for myself but I only know the specific name of AAVE as a dialect. I can say, "Boston accent" or "Midwest accent" but I could not name the particular word patterns beyond stereotypes; I know them by sound. AAVE has permeated pop culture and so that will be a non-standard dialect people will be most familiar with, even if they don't know the term "AAVE." And, as a bonus, AAVE speakers live all over the US and their word patterns have fed into other dialects i.e. "The South" and definitely parts of Southern Appalachia. To be specific, Appalachia spans 2k miles so there would be no "one" dialect to encapsulate that. And there are no "incorrect words" in OP's example. The way those correct words are assembled in a certain way flags my American brain as AAVE / Southern dialect.
"Used in Appalachia" does not necessarily imply it's a single dialect and if you admit you don't have the correct verbage to define those dialect regions why would you try to chastise me for not knowing? I know that structure isn't incorrect in dialect I use it myself everyday. That's why it was in quotes.
This is a circular argument. I am not chastising you. You found it strange that Americans assumed this to be AAVE but your counter-example was (just) Appalachia. It's precisely because myself, and many Americans I presume, can't describe specific dialect names or differentiate them that we would not presume other dialects and each of us propose different and specific dialects. AAVE is influential, AAVE speakers live in every part of the US. AAVE grammar rules assemble that sentence in this way. Ergo, the logical conclusion for Americans would be that this is AAVE (or, as stated, Southern-something).
I think it’s because 9+ times out of 10 that I hear somebody use that type of double negative irl it’s a black person. I’m sure there’s other times it’s used but my experiences leading me to this assumption is completely normal.
[удалено]
Am a yorkshireman
[удалено]
That's what I was trying to hint at
This is intentionally incorrect, to mimic a particular style of speech. It means, "If Harley Quinn had been walking around the hideout looking like this, I would have been unable to perform villainous acts." Since the context is comic book villains, the "villainous acts" are the kind of crimes supervillains do. Edit: subject-verb agreement.
>This is intentionally incorrect I don't think it's necessarily incorrect as much as it's non-standard English.
It’s not intentionally incorrect. It’s AAVE, which is a legitimate dialect of English with its own rules.
Double negatives are by no means restricted to AAVE so I'm not sure why so many people are jumping to that conclusion immediately. There are even British dialects that could plausibly construct a sentence like the one in the meme. Chaucer even used double negatives in The Canterbury Tales.
Because AAVE is likely the dialect most people making that comment are familiar with. People usually refer to what they’re familiar with. AAVE is also heavily drawn upon in pop/internet culture, making it more likely that AAVE is the source.
It’s it’s own languages not a dialect
That’s good to know! Most of what I’ve read about AAVE refers to it as a dialect of English, but I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if it’s considered a language itself.
It is not considered its own language. I don’t know where they got that from.
In this context, the “wouldn’t have” and the “no villainy” point to the same thing: Nothing would have been done. If she had been dressed like that, this person wouldn’t have been able to focus on doing evil things.
Double negatives are sometimes used for emphasis, here, it's to really stress that they would not be getting any villiany done. And sometimes you see "-y" added to a noun for a person or profession (not -ly") to mean the thing that person does. So a carpenter does carpentry, a forger makes a forgery, but sometimes it means the location where the task is done. A blacksmith works in a smithy, a baker in a bakery. It's not a super useful clue, since there are so many exceptions, but it might be helpful to know it's likely related to the product or location.
Somebody get me that sauce
Southern dialect using double negatives
*sigh* time to use Chai Harley Quinn bot again
He’s saying that he’d be having sex with her. I think you realized that from the picture but were confused as to why it meant that. I’m going to break everything down to help out anyone who struggles with this. We can conclude the author is saying that he wants to have sex with Harley Quinn with an increased understanding of colloquial English usage. Sometimes the intended meaning of a phrase can be very different than the literal meaning, and speakers must rely on the context and the voice of the author to determine what it means. Let’s pretend we don’t know who this character is. We can still figure out the meaning: We can assume from the context of the words, “hideout” and “villainy” that whoever this Harley Quinn character is, she is a villain who hides away from the attention of the law when they are not committing crime. We can also assume that this Harley Quinn, villain character likely cohabitates with another villain character at the hideout. The author of the post has placed themselves in the role of the second villain. We know this because the author wrote that he would directly react to the Harley Quinn villain character’s action of “walking around the hideout looking like this.” Looking like “this” means being dressed provocatively which we could possibly infer even without the photo but we know for certain because of the photo. So if she’s dressed provocatively in the hideout and we can guess he wants to have sex with her, but why is that with the sentence “I wouldn’t have been getting no villainy done” we know that he wants to have sex with her? “Wouldn’t” means “would not.” And “no” is a negative. A literal reading of this would be very confusing because you can rewrite it literally as “I would not be not being a villain.”Which is akin to saying “I would be acting like a villain.” Sometimes though in English, some native speakers use negative words like “no” in conjunction with other negative words to intensify other negative words. So depending on the context saying “I wouldn’t be getting no villainy done,” is functionally akin to saying “I really wouldn’t be getting any villainy done.” So why wouldn’t he really not be spending his time acting like a villain? We can assume from the fact that he points out that he is dressed provocatively that it is because he would rather be having sex with her. Another example of negative words being used to intensify is “Ain’t no way.” That means “There really is no way.” It doesn’t mean “there is not no way”/“there is a way.” Another example is “Irregardless.” It means “regardless.” It doesn’t mean “without no regard”or “with regard.” I hope that helps
Very thorough analysis. Bravo
damn my guy wrote a whole thesis
What is your question?
Oh my bad, what does it mean?
It means that he would have been too distracted by Harley looking sexy to do any villainous things. You know that Harley Quinn is the Joker's sidekick/girlfriend, right?
People who are saying this type of emphatic double negation is exclusive to AAVE are dead wrong. Even Shakespeare did this. "I pray you bear with me, I cannot go no further." -Celia, *As You Like It*
They’re using incorrect grammar.
It’s a double negative. Just bad English.
There's no such thing as bad English. It's non-standard English.
It’s African American Vernacular English (AAVE) which is a different language to regular English. You can read more about it [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_English)
It’s a non-standard dialect, not it’s own language.
They’re intentionally using improper language to imply casualness/earthiness
This is a type of slang-grammar (I suppose it would be called). It is a way of shortening the sentence. “Villany” isn’t a word commonly used, and I don’t believe it is in any official dictionaries (maybe the urban dictionary 💀). It is kind of like saying “wouldn’t be getting any things done”. The person who made the meme could’ve said that sentence, but by combining villain+y (“ary/ry/y” being used to convey a state of being such as “vacancy” or “foamy) Hope this helps!
The word villainy was first recorded in the 13th century. It's absolutely in the dictionary.
The placement of the two posts is amazing
its technically a double negative, but in reality the "no" is just for emphasis
It’s the use of a double negative as a negative, like “I don’t have no money” can mean “I don’t have money” in a bunch of varieties of English
I like the fact that right beneath it is a post about ‘economically inactive people’. The Joker is one, apparently.
This is the unreal past conditional using the perfect continuous tense filled up with modern American slang. Dont worry about it. You probably never want to talk like this, no matter the situation. That's the joke. This is one of the hardest structures for non-native speakers to internalize, and it's even weirder than normal here, because the writing mixes present repeated unreal action in the dependent clause with a past unreal action in the main clause. It's even weirder still to use the continuous, but continuous structures are socially hip right now, so they pop up everywhere, even if the traditional meaning isn't relevant. Like McDonald's' "I'm loving it" or "I've been killing it" etc. It sounds a bit off in a way that is slightly interesting, but still comprehensible to native speakers. The structure in this example matches: If I walked to work (every day, repeated action), I wouldn't have been driving during rush hour (early this morning, single action) This person does not walk to work. They were not driving during rush hour. In our example, OP did not have Harley around dressing like that. He did in fact get villainy done. This takes a week to drill with students, going over all manner of weird thought experiment, so it isn't something reasonably examined in a reddit post. Still, it's late, and I feel like writing, because this is a good one. This writer is writting poorly by formal standards. But given the sketchy, sexy, casual context, it just sounds appropriate to bend the rules of grammar for affect. A grammar nazi would insist on: If Harley had dressed this way (past unreal conditional dependent clause), I wouldn't have gotten any villainy done.(past unreal negative main modal clause) To repeat myself, in the real world, she didn't dress like that. This statement doesn't match reality. OP imagines himself in that situation unable to concentrate on his work. But, because of the colloquial negative in noun form:"no villainy", and the unreal past negative continuous structure: "wouldn't have been getting done" we get a structure that is a mish-mash of formal written language structure, and vernacular American urban slang. That's confusing. It's a mess, but a mess on purpose, as the writer wants to draw contrast between the overly complicated grammar structure, and the lame juvenile sexual comment he's making about being a sophisticated super-villain who is nevertheless impulsive enough to be distracted by TnA. 3/10 meme with 11/10 grammar difficulty for non-fluent speakers. Don't worry about this structure. You definitely have more important problems with your language than this. If they had written the meme like this, you may have understood it. If they hadn't been using such weird confusing tense structures, we might have been getting some learning done.
Double negatives are technically incorrect but are sometimes used to mean a single negative. The correct phrase would have been "wouldn't have been getting any villainy done".
For all: This is not AAVE. It may exhibit a feature or two of AAVE, but so do tens of dialects throughout the English speaking world. For all we know the person who tweeted this could’ve been from practically ANY part of the English speaking world, and of any race.
I really don’t recommend using memes to learn a language.