arundelo comments on Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Will_Newsome 04 June 2010 04:08PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 05 June 2010 03:22:10AM *  2 points [-]

That's actually a matter where some interesting linguistic judgment might be in order.

The "ain't" part is grammatical in some dialects of English, though, as far as I know, not in any form of standard English that is officially recognized anywhere. But the wrong cases for cetera and pares are not grammatical in any form of Latin that has ever been spoken or written anywhere.

On the whole, I'd say that "ain't" is less bad, since in the dialects in which it is grammatical, it has the same form for both singular and plural. Therefore, at least it respects the number agreement with the Latin plural cetera, whereas "is" commits an additional offense by violating that agreement.

Comment author: arundelo 05 June 2010 01:12:23PM 1 point [-]

Wikipedia:

The word ain't can be used in both speech and writing to catch attention and to give emphasis, as in "You ain't seen nothing yet," or "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives an example from film critic Richard Schickel: "the wackiness of movies, once so deliciously amusing, ain't funny anymore."

(Which is exactly how it's used in "ceteris ain't paribus". See also this post by Geoff Nunberg.)