injustice..

[onebatmother]

but unjust...

I wonder why.

Don't know but good question.

I was hoping that someone might have come up with the answer to this by now.
My dictionary says that the in in injustice comes from Latin and the un in unjust comes from Old English.
But that doesn't really explain the 'why'. At a guess, I would say injustice came from legal terminology and unjust stems from something else (religion?).

hmm. The in and un derivations sounds right fembear, but as you say, doesn't explain why.

And now I'm looking at my 'I wonder why' and wondering whether I should, after all, have added a question mark..(?)

I think sometimes prefixes just get attached to words because they sound better, but also there does seem to be a tendency for nouns to use in where adjectives use un...

someone who is ungrateful is an ingrate.
plus there's unable and inability and all sorts. I'd look it up if I had the energy.

I am unenergetic. I suffer from inenergy.

inergy?

Hmm, have never thought about this before, but it is odd that the noun takes one prefix and the adjective takes a different one. FWIW my dictionary agrees 'un' is Old English and 'in' is Latin.

I like inergy.

But tell me about the question mark.

um, it's a punctuation symbol used to denote an interrogation.

snigger.
You don't know, do you, senora?

which is the sound of my gauntlet landing on stripped pine [girn]

there really should be a girn emoticon shouldn't there?

I wonder, 'Why would you need a question mark there, Bat?'

I like that: ungrateful and ingrate.
Unfaithful and infidel? The latter is much more Latin.

Well, precisely Threadie.

Is 'I wonder why' actually 'I wonder, why?', in this instance?

Senora

JeremyVile has an excellent line in grin-derived emoticons. My favourite is

No. You could have said "I wonder, 'Why?'"

Or you could have said "I wonder why."

But not "I wonder why?"

(Unless in Aussie soap.)

Have to go now. Harrison Ford is killing Michelle Pfeiffer.

I'm not sure that "I wonder why?" would be truly awful.

One might see "I wonder why." as the beginning and end of the discussion. Onebat is sharing with us the fact that she wonders, but with no desire for our opinions. "I wonder why?" on the other hand might be a neat shorthand for "I wonder why. My pedantic friends, do you have any ideas on this matter?"

She is stating the fact that she is wondering. So not a question.

(Sorry: I was rude just now to butt in to the conversation and then disappear to watch the end of a rubbish film. Apologies.)

Well yes of course. But did you not like my shorthand idea? That the question mark invites a response?

But is it, stylistically, a rather odd statement? It feels as though the only answer is "are you really?"

I think when we say "I wonder why?" it is probably a bastardization of "'why?', I wonder."

Night-o. I know I will dream about this tonight. It's alwasy the most mundane threads which feature heavily.

Actually I've just realized that I've dreamed (dreamt?) about MN on several occasions. Is that bad?

But that is only because in an electronic conversation we bend grammatical rules because words have to bear a greater weight than they do in more formal contexts. So the question mark you speak of would be like leaning forward encouragingly in real life. Not grammatical but nice.

Sorry, missed yours slingsby - quite so re shorthand, and much neater than my version.

Sorry, x-post onebat.

I get angsty about this sort of construct:

"Could you email me your responses as soon as possible."

Grammatically that should have a question mark but I don't like putting one because I am requesting not questioning.