Martin Eden / Мартин Иден

”

“I should say the first thing of all would be to get a grammar. Your grammar is—” She had intended saying “awful,” but she amended it to “is not particularly good.”

He flushed and sweated.

“I know I must talk a lot of slang an’ words you don’t understand. But then they’re the only words I know – how to speak. I’ve got other words in my mind, picked ’em up from books, but I can’t pronounce ’em, so I don’t use ’em.”

“It isn’t what you say, so much as how you say it.

You don’t mind my being frank, do you? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No, no,” he cried, while he secretly blessed her for her kindness. “Fire away. I’ve got to know, an’ I’d sooner know from you than anybody else.”

“Well, then, you say, �You was’; it should be, �You were.’ You say �I seen’ for �I saw.’ You use the double negative—”

“What’s the double negative?” he demanded; then added humbly, “You see, I don’t even understand your explanations.

”

“I’m afraid I didn’t explain that,” she smiled. “A double negative is – let me see – well, you say, �never helped nobody.’ �Never’ is a negative. �Nobody’ is another negative. It is a rule that two negatives make a positive. �Never helped nobody’ means that, not helping nobody, they must have helped somebody.”

“That’s pretty clear,” he said.

“I never thought of it before. But it don’t mean they must have helped somebody, does it? Seems to me that �never helped nobody’ just naturally fails to say whether or not they helped somebody. I never thought of it before, and I’ll never say it again.”

She was pleased and surprised with the quickness and surety of his mind. As soon as he had got the clew he not only understood but corrected her error.

“You’ll find it all in the grammar,” she went on.

“There’s something else I noticed in your speech. You say �don’t’ when you shouldn’t. �Don’t’ is a contraction and stands for two words. Do you know them?”

He thought a moment, then answered, “�Do not.’”

She nodded her head, and said, “And you use �don’t’ when you mean �does not.’”

He was puzzled over this, and did not get it so quickly.

“Give me an illustration,” he asked.