Thread: Анекдоты, шутки, шуточные стишки, истории - смешные или не очень

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

P.S. Never use double negatives is one of those Grammar Rules that are taught to younger children in school, along with Never split an infinitive and Never end a sentence with a preposition. (In fact, some of the greatest writers in the English language have broken all of these so-called "rules".)

We were taught to put prepositions at the end in questions and relative clauses. What are you thinking of? Later we found out that the preposition could be on the first place too.
About double negatives we were taught that they were impossible in English.
Из-за двойных отрицаний по-русски становится непонятна история Одиссея и Циклопа. "Кто тебя обидел?" "Никто" Ну, раз тебя никто не обидел,..." Это "не" не было нужно в древнегреческом.
- Чего ты не понимаешь?
- Ничего.

Originally Posted by Marcus

We were taught to put prepositions at the end in questions and relative clauses.

And, indeed, you can!

The idea that one should not put prepositions at the end of a sentence/clause is essentially a "classroom myth" based on the rules of Latin grammar. Generations of English-speaking children have been taught "never end a sentence/clause with a preposition" because it's impossible or ungrammatical to do so in standard Latin. And some of these children grow up to become schoolteachers who pass on this non-existent "rule" to the next generation of kids.

P.S. Needless to say, this "rule" goes back to the days when it was still common for English-speaking pupils to study basic Latin grammar in school! (As far as I know, it was typical for middle-class Victorian boys to learn Latin.)