All I do, I do by ear

Do you learn things by ear? If you've got an ear for language, you've probably noticed many differences between spoken and written English. One of them concerns the double negative. In standard English, two negative words like "not nothing" add up to a positive, or affirmative, statement. In many dialects of English, however, from the American South and African-American vernaculars to most British regional dialects, double negatives don't cancel each other out. Instead, each one actually intensifies the other. You'll hear double negatives all the time in popular music. Just think of the Rolling Stones' "I Can't Get No Satisfaction".

This month, Spotlight magazine and Spotlight Audio feature legendary blues pianist Pinetop Perkins, one of the musicians who brought the Delta Blues up the Mississippi to create the electrified Chicago Blues sound. Perkins is really something else: He's played with all the right bluesmen, has won just about every kind of award there is, and is still performing and recording the blues at age 97. He's just released a new album:

Pinetop Perkins and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith: Joined at the Hip

"Of course, I didn't get no schoolin'. I just picked it up", he says. "All I do, I do by ear." Polly Hughes, who interviewed Perkins for Spotlight, discovered that he keeps his Sundays blues-free. He told her:

"I don't play nothin' real on Sunday. I remember the Sabbath and keep it as holy as I can. It's all from the Lord above, is all I can say."

In our exercise on the next page, review some of the highlights of his life, along with the — standard! — use of the quantifiers all, every(thing), each, some(thing), any(thing), no(thing) and none.

Anne Hodgson