So earlier this evening I was showing my housemates the "What is a Man?" scene from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and my one Housemate who is an English Major took offense to the grammar of the sentence "Mankind ill needs a savior such as you.", saying over and over "Ill needs? It doesn't make sense, it just doesn't work."
Help me out here guys. I'm certain I've heard this phrase used more than in just SotN, and while it probably isn't up the the standards of modern english, it seems perfectly acceptable for 1797 Translyvania.
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dunno
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Edited by SonOfTheShire: 3/23/2013 2:44:04 AMReally, though, while I can stickle with the best of them when it comes to spelling and punctuation, I hesitate to call word choice or other stylistic approaches "wrong". Spelling and punctuation serve an actual purpose. They tell the readers how to read. The words they read may be bad, but that doesn't make them wrong - after all, you can have a perfectly correct sentence that's a horror to read. I think we should be less eager to correct what should merely be (as opposed to being merely) a matter of style.
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Edited by SonOfTheShire: 3/23/2013 2:18:26 AMIt sounds okay, a word which here means correct. You could say "mankind needs a saviour". Saying "mankind ill needs" is just the opposite of that.
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It is a proper phrase, but you used it improperly.
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Edited by A 3 Legged Goat: 3/23/2013 2:04:26 AMLooks fine to me. It sounds odd sure, but then what part of English doesnt?
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ITT the only language that I know. That I also know nothing about. ): haha
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Yes, ill can be used as an adverb.