Do not insult the poor.
The above sentence was asked in my exam for voice conversion. I had four options, managed to rule out two of them but confused between these two.
A) Let the poor not be insulted.
B) Let the poor be not insulted.
I tried to find answer to my problem but couldn't find concrete answer. I guess both are same in meaning with just a subtle difference in construction but since its a MCQ question I need to choose one answer, which one should I choose ? Which construction is the better one ? The solution has A as answer but doesn't explain why.
Best Answer
What are the other two options? I suspect that the correct answer was actually one of the ones you ruled out.
"Let the poor not be insulted" and "Let the poor be not insulted" seem to me to both have to do with the poor people's own feelings on the matter. This is especially true in the latter case. Thus, if I only had the two answers to choose from, I'd pick A as sounding more like the intention.
However, I suspect the correct answer was actually "Let not the poor be insulted." That is a rather archaic way of saying "Do not insult the poor." Somebody might use it intentionally as an affectation.