# American logic and grammar

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-logic-and-grammar/733076>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [September 30, 2015, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-logic-and-grammar/733076 "2015-09-30T20:30:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 9

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**Author:** ![SantaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/da6949/32.png) [@SantaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SantaMan)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-logic-and-grammar/733076/9 "2015-09-30T20:45:11Z")

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[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18251035&postcount=3](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18251035&postcount=3)  
I asked this a while back and got this response:

> [@"All X is not Y" vs "Not all X is Y"](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-x-is-not-y-vs-not-all-x-is-y/716399/3):
>
> In my Logic class, we had a chapter on formal Aristotelian Logic, with its “[Square of Opposition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_of_opposition)” (analysis of the forms “All X are Y”, “No X is Y”, “Some X are Y”, “Some X are not Y”).
> 
> The phrasing “All X are not Y”, we were told, is a traditional phrasing that is an artifact of its literal translation from the original Greek (or Latin?) wording, where the phrase is not ambiguous as it is in English.

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