word order - "Really" in a negative sentence



I am not really ready to get married.



Did I put "really" in the right place? I just want my sentence to sound stronger than "I am not ready to get married."



Answer



It is ambiguous.


The ambiguity comes from that fact that "really ready" is not the same thing as being plain "ready". So, if you are not "really ready" you might still be "ready".


Some alternatives:



I am really not ready to get married.


I am really unready to get married.


I'm not ready to get married at all.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

single word requests - What do you call hypothetical inhabitants living on the Moon?