ぜんぜんしません。。。

I came across an interesting article in my online peregrinations and perambulations this morning - it was talking about the current and historical use of ぜんぜん with positives, not just negatives.  

At the time that we were learning about it, we were told that for it and あまり, we needed to always use a negative verb, they were a bonded pair.

Later, when I learned that you could conjugate adjectives to be negative, I wondered if they could go with a negative adjective and a positive verb* or only with a negative verb.  Then I wondered about if they could go with negative adjectives, could they go with a positive adjective (one not in its negative form) but that itself has a negative connotation - such as わるい.  It's bad.  It is itself a negative concept, and is the antonym, the inverse of いい/よい.  If they could go with よくない, why not with わるい and a positive verb?

Of course, all those ponderings were predicated*** upon the issue of could they go with negative adjectives and positive verbs... and I didn't get a very good answer by googling, and a somewhat confusing answer by asking.  Perhaps I should have asked in email, a written answer might have been clearer.

But this article shows that the rules for the use might a) be changing & b) not have been as strict as people thought in the first place - a bit like using singular "they" in English.  It's been in use since Anglo Saxon times.  It's only the crack down of draconian grammarians in the Victorian era that discouraged it.  People that complain about it being new fangled grammar that they won't use, are just showing their ignorance (& usually their bigotry :D).

But back to ぜんぜん... here's the article link & you can see it for yourself.  Different use of 'zenzen' fails to annoy Japanese grammar police And it even mentions historical usage of ぜんぜん and わるい and a positive verb... :D

The explained usage at the end does take us into the tricky grammatical waters of negative questions in both English and Japanese, where saying yes or no can confuse listeners (& sometimes the speaker too) as to what you really intended to mean, regardless of what you said.  For instance, if you ask "Don't you want a cup of tea?", you could say "Yes" and be meaning "Yes, I don't want a cup of tea, you are quite correct."# But most people would interpret the response as "Yes, I would like a cup of tea##", so sometimes a positive can be a negative, and vice versa... and the same in Japanese when you make an invitation and phrase it as a negative question, so that people don't have to disagree with you if they aren't able to take part in the activity.

But I think that's enough negativity and negative thought for one day...####

* a little like the way that you can say a negative item (at least) two ways in English - you can say "I did not wait a long time" or "It was not a long time that I waited".  One has the negative burden on the verb (or its auxiliary. not), and the other puts the negative burden on the adjective (the time stays aloof and isn't altered by anything in either case ;)**).

** Yeah, I know, it's being altered by the adjective, that's what it's there for, but I couldn't resist.  Besides, in English "not time" would seriously change the meaning of the sentence, so it seemed worth pointing out (you'd either be in a Sci-Fi universe where things run on not-time, or anti-time, or there would not be time to wait, there would be no time, long or not).

*** Hee, a grammar word as a logic underpinning term.  It's not quite a pun, but given the context, it's not quite not a pun either.****

**** I must be talking and thinking about negative grammar structures too much, that last footnote sentence really felt like it was trying to become あまり...

# And the person talking is obviously a barbarian that we shouldn't be wasting any of our precious tea on anyway, but back to the grammar...

## With an unspoken "and you are obviously quite wrong in your assumptions about my tea drinking habits, that is a vile slander, prepare to die!  Pistols at dawn!!"  We take our tea drinking seriously...###

### For some reason, anytime that it is a grammar point involving drinking tea, sensei calls on me to answer it.  I have had a lot of practice at the various past and non past forms or のむ, including the polite & plain versions, evens stems, and the て form, extended predicate, currently, continuing to or habitually drinking tea (well, obviously ;) :D), and so on...  Much less practice with the negatives though, which is a good job considering the prior footnote.

#### A tiny goth voice says "You can never have too much negativity!  ぜんぜん!" :D