Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[welkins2139]

Avery: What is you ready for, Berniece? You just gonna drift along from day to day. Life is more than making it from one day to another. You gonna look up one day adn it's all gonna be past you. Life's gonna be gone out your hands--there won't be enough to make nothing with. I'm standing here now, Bernice--but I don't know how much longer I'm gonna standing here waiting on you.

Would you explain the bold text?

Is there any words missing after 'with' such as life?

[myprofe]

The text has many mistakes. I can imagine what the bold text means but I can't be sure.
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I'm never going to learn if you don't correct my mistakes!

[Anuradha Chepur]

If you keep doing nothing with your life, you won't have enough life left to even do nothing with. This is what it means.

The phrase in question is an example of the controversial 'sentence ending in a preposition', since it's object is moved to a position earlier in the sentence.

The structure is formed this way:
1. there won't be enough (life) you make nothing with (which).
2. there won't be enough (life), (which) you make nothing with.

The object of with in your bold text is the imaginary 'which', which refers to 'enough (life)'.


Personally, I liked both the dialect and the message.

[Lorikeet]

[CP]

It looks like someone is writing in dialect, and I am guessing that this transcription added some errors not in the original.

Only someone trying to imitate a dialect would write something like, "What is you ready for?" or "You gonna look up one day...." I'll bet the characters are in the Deep South, the time is the 19th century, and they are either slaves or former slaves.

So I think Lorikeet is right in interpreting "nothing" as "anything" in that passage.
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb