There are no inferior LANGUAGES... just the ignorant vernacular spoken by inferior PEOPLE.

KIDDING! I couldn't resist. That's the way the discussion seems to be trending.

Seriously, though... it's like practicing the piano. There are no wrong notes. There are only perfectly good notes played at the wrong time, in the wrong order, or in the wrong song.

Language is a bit like that. As we used to say in my family, "there are no bad words." There are only words used improperly. Proper usage is heavily dependent on context.

No, I wouldn't want to go into a job interview spouting "I says to him" and the like. But neither would I want to write a rap song as though I was addressing a literary society.

ladylucy, the usage I hear most in my neighborhood conforms to what I know of Ebonics, in which verb forms are drastically simplified (I am not myself "Ebonic" so I'm not an expert). The present-tense conjugation turns out to be "I says, you says, he/she/it says, we says, you all says, they says." No kidding.

Since we're getting so technical and all...

Folks, modern science considers there to be five basic "tastes" that a person can sense. All other flavors are combinations of any of these five basic tastes, plus whatever the sense of smell contributes. These five tastes are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and the recently discovered "umami," or "savory." The word "umami" comes from Japanese, and I'm told it means something like what "yummy" means in English. (Dyske? Is this true?)

Umami is the flavor that makes meat foods taste different from (and many say better than) vegetable foods. Aged cheese, miso, and monosodium glutamate (MSG) possess the highest levels of the chemicals involved.

Here's a brief and accurate article on the five tastes: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Basic%20taste

So "savory" is actually neither sweet nor salty, but a basic taste of its own. The article does mention that Chinese cuisine considers "spicy" to be a basic taste in place of "savory," but I've read articles recently that demonstrate that the "hot" flavor we associate with chili peppers is only a sensation of irritation. Any other flavors we associate with spiciness are combinations of the five basic tastes.

Oh, I should have clarified. "But" and "nevertheless" mean the same thing. It is redundant to use both. I would choose one or the other.

Hmm. Let's look at this...

"The chances of my ever being interrogated were nil...." Dave is right, "chances of."

"...but I nevertheless felt better that way." Try "...but I felt better that way" or "...nevertheless, I felt better that way."

Even so. What I think you are trying to get across is that someone who thought they were going to be interrogated (this is a bad thing, yes?) is relieved to find that it is probably not going to happen.

But what your sentence actually implies is that the person is somewhat surprised to find that he feels better, despite having to miss the interrogation that he wanted. Is that what you meant?

Ben, if your best answer to a grammar question is essentially, "because that's the way it IS, dammit, and if you disagree, then up yours," then maybe you should reconsider posting.

Ben, please allow me to inform you that your posts would be much more intelligent and credible if you showed you knew or cared the first thing about grammar, style, and usage.

You mean, "The bombs rested, precariously volatile, on the edge of the shelf."

Peter, I think your example sentence would be punctuated like this: "The bombs rested, volatile, on the edge of the shelf." However, "volatile" still modifies the noun "bombs" and not the verb "rested," thus it is still an adjective. I think vindibul did want the adverb.

Some uses of what you call a "flat" adverb can be seen in the recent comments to the Jan 20 post by slo.

Those are good ones. This would make a good game, wouldn't it. :)

Finally getting around to answering Goossun's question about "abuse" and "misuse:"

Both words currently mean a wrong or bad use. In some particular cases, though, the distinction still remains, with "misuse" sorresponding more closely to "wrong" and "abuse" to "bad." The best example:

"My doctor misuses prescription drugs" could mean that the doctor could, for example, be prescribing the wrong drug for the illness, or it could mean that he often forgets to take his own medicine at the proper time.

"My doctor abuses prescription drugs" would mean that he uses drugs to get high, and that he is likely to be addicted to them.