Cracker: Slipping into Darkness
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"Am" works if I'm genuinely asking a question. "Aren't" suggests I already know the answer... ;)
Well in that case you can display true smugness (as I often do) by using long sentences with superfluous wordage and double negatives:
Jolisa, am I not wrong in thinking that you didn't join PAS until sometime just after it was founded?
Note the emphasis on the word 'after' and not 'just' and the inclusion of the word 'sometime'. This implies Jolisa joined late regardless. To suggest 'JUST after' might suggest to some that Jolisa was almost there at the founding but not quite, but as if the difference were inconsequential. Personally I would have gone with an overly polite question, feigning humility, which in itself would force an answer acknowledging my greatness:
Jolisa, I stand to be corrected but would I be wrong in thinking that you didn't join PAS until sometime just after it was founded?
And since the answer is self-evident the question is rhetorical, which means that if no-one responds to the question you can smugly presume that everyone has acknowledged your greatness. Even if the real reason they didn't reply was because, like, who cares dude?
RB: if you need a guest blog on lessons in being an ahole ...?
</pendant-at-the-disco>
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Bugger all this pedantry business. Welcome back, Damian - here's to having more time to do what you want to do. Isn't that what life should be about, after all?
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Wha ?
Perplexed 81st not gettin this at all...
Welcome back...I know that feeling about half finished ideas...
"It's been a while since my last blog......"
Makes me feel almost confessional.
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Perplexed 81st not gettin this at all...
Oh. Maybe I should have just stuck with Welcome back, Damian too. My humour is obscure. Very. Clearly I have too much time on my hands. Maybe it's Mortgage Rage?
I'm just stepping out for some cigarettes. I may be some time.
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Jolisa, aren't I right I thinking you were there JUST after the founding? </pedant>
Yes, you aren't :-) Well, I suppose it depends how pedanty we get about dates and locations. My first post came 2 weeks after yours, you wildly punctual creature. But I was posting from the other side of the dateline, after all, which always makes me a day late.
Russell kicked it off on November 14, and I suspect Chad and Debra were there that first week, too, although their archives have gone all 1984. Rob jumped aboard in January. And we were off.
(Warning - severe nostalgia and/or confusion may result from clicking those links. Five years is a long time!)
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Russell kicked it off on November 14, and I suspect Chad and Debra were there that first week, too
Yeah and this is what I was trying to remember. I could see from the archives that you were there a couple of weeks later, what I was trying (and failing) to remember was who was there at the launch. We had Peter Dunne plant a tree, I remember that, and Chris Trotter said a few words, but as to the actual bloggers?
And I would never take anything away from your five and a half years minus two weeks contribution Jolisa, you're a star and you know it. I'm just feeling all insecure cos Russell has a TV show and I don't...
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Sounds to me like you pwnz those shows, Damian.
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InternationalObserver wrote :
Jolisa, aren't I right in thinking you were ...
Am I right in thinking ...?
</evenmorepedant>Earlier this week I had exactly this same discussion with my son when he came across the word "amn't" in a sentence like "I'm right, amn't I ?". We both agreed that it should be "aren't", and I was very surprised to see the in my Concise Oxford dictionary, there were two meanings for "aren't". One is the standard contraction of "are not", and the second is the interrogative contraction of "am not".
To explain this more fully, I refer you to the Dictionary.com website (retrieved on 9-Apr-2008) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aren't
—Usage note The social unacceptability of ain't, the historical contraction of am not, has created a gap in the pattern of verbal contractions. I'm not, the alternative to I ain't, has no corresponding interrogative form except ain't I. In questions, ain't I is often avoided by the use of aren't I: I'm right, aren't I? Aren't I on the list? This aren't is simply a different outcome of the same historical development that yielded ain't, but the fact that it is spelled and pronounced like the contraction of are not (as in You are staying, aren't you?) apparently gives it, for some, an acceptability that ain't lacks. The use of aren't I is objected to by others because a declarative counterpart, I aren't, does not exist. Many speakers, however, prefer aren't I to the uncontracted, rather formal am I not.
</pendant>*</pendant>
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No worries Damian... just a touch of expat angst, you know, the forgotten family member and all that. Didn't Martin Phillipps write a song about it?
And if you can't remember the launch party it must have been a good one :-)
The social unacceptability of ain't
Oh, bring back ain't! Lovely word, impeccable pedigree. Ain't misbehavin. Ain't I a woman. Ain't no sunshine. Ain't she sweet.
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Didn't Martin Phillipps write a song about it?
I'm sure he's written several on that theme, but "Don't Be ... Memory" off Submarine Bells is the one that immediately springs to mind.
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