ne mozhno

[John Dunn]

My Scottish wife says 'amn't I' and not as a joke.  It was, I believe, taught in Scottish schools as a way of avoiding the supposedly incorrect 'aren't I', which is what I would say.  Both English and Russian have their share of more or less arbitrary rules thought up by grammarians with too much time on their hands and inculcated into generations of schoolchildren.  I wonder who decided that можно could be paired only with нельзя and why.  Anyway, language changes, and from what I understand, at some point in the future we shall all have adopted the generalised tag question 'innit?' (cf French n'est-ce pas?').

As Dal' helpfully puts it: Что льзя, то и можно.

John Dunn.

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Sibelan Forrester [sforres1 at SWARTHMORE.EDU]
Sent: 03 March 2011 15:46
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] ne mozhno

My (Scottish) grandfather used to say "amn't I?" ("Amn't" would be used
by people from Ireland, like his mother, but he did it as a joke; I
believe "amn't" is the source of the widely used substandard "ain't.")

Native speakers can get away with usages and wordplay that will be taken
as mistakes if non-native-speakers try them, even if they try them
knowingly.

Sibelan Forrester


On 3/3/11 9:39 AM, Ashot Vardanyan wrote:
> It's as funny as the "l'zya" form used ironically or just as a joke for
> "mozhno". Of course, "ne mozhno" is not a standard, nor is "l'zya" at all. To
> me, sounds something like "mayn't" or even"mightn't" in English which sound
> terrible, don't they?
>
> Ashot Vardanyan
>

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