At 03:04 AM 8/22/2002 -0500, you wrote:

"No, no, no!" Chichi snapped, whirling around to face Goku. "Absolutely

not!

If you think MY Gohan is going to stop his studying to go off and have

some

silly race with you around the sun--which is really dangerous!--than you
****have another thing coming****, and that "provided the fish so I should

get a

little leeway" line isn't going to cut it here!"

Notice the phrase I've outlined with asterisks, people.

I see this far, far too often in fanfics, and even in professional writing.

Well, if it's used all THAT often, shouldn't it be valid simply via the 
fact that so many people use it? After all, it's Chi-Chi speaking it, and 
people SAY "You've got another thing coming!" in reality all the time.
Now, saying "You've got another THINK coming" might make more sense, 
certainly... but would Chi-Chi actually say it? Would she take the time out 
to say "Well, 'you've got another thing coming' doesn't make much sense, I 
should say 'you've got another think coming'", or would she merely assume 
it was "You've got another thing coming" because that was the way she'd 
always heard it?
It all comes down to a matter of Correct Versus Real. Now, there's a 
correct way to speak, certainly, but not everyone speaks that way. Heck, 
not everyone even has the same incorrections of speech.
For example, take a Piers Anthony novel. Almost everyone that you'll find 
speaks in exactly the same way, no matter whether they were born and raised 
in New York or if they've lived all their lives in a nice little shack 
bordering the outback of Australia. (Not only that, but they're all also 
familiar with the same obscure myths and legends and all of them know all 
about current events, but that's not really an issue here. n.n;;) This 
comes down to a matter of more than just using dialect. It's a matter of 
capturing the simple essence of the manner in which people talk and speak.
Double-negatives are incorrect, and yet you see Ranma use them regularly. 
Why? Because it's appropriate to his character, he's an uneducated and 
rough person who doesn't speak in what just about anyone would term a 
correct manner. But to have him speak properly would not be correct either, 
because it would not be correct *when applied to him*.
So, even if it doesn't make sense, I still think it would be correct for 
Chi-Chi to say, "You've got another thing coming!"

-Rann


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