The French Language, with its Académie Française, may sometimes seem like the antithesis of English. Where non-standard English revels in new word construction and meaning change, and the diversity of its speakers has forced its simplification, French seems regulated and perfected, and above all, unchanging. Eternal. But it's simply untrue, and this is my favorite example of how French has changed in the most capricious manner. If you've studied any French, you know that a negative is constructed with a ne in front of the verb and a pas after. And you might have learned this so long ago, like I did, that you never really thought about that curious little pas . I mean, the ne makes sense. It's like adding no in front of Spanish verbs or even not in front of English ones. But what's with that pas ? In fact, hundreds of years ago, a French negative was constructed in the same way as Spanish or English: the negative preceding a...