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Comment by louprado | Hacker News Reader

One complaint about English is that double negatives are not grammatically correct. The word "not" is so important it should be re-enforced in someway. Spanish supports double negatives. The French add redundancy with "ne" and "pas".

It's worth noting that American gangsters often talk with double negatives and the U.S. military use the phrase "repeat NOT" since their discussions are often mission critical. But I am certain their are countless examples of harm because someone in a hurry, omitted the word 'not' in a discussion or email.

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Double negatives are grammatically correct English. Consider the sentence, "I do not think that course of action would be unwise."--that is a double negative, and I know of no one who thinks there's even a hint of problem with that sentence.

One facet of double negatives is that the English sense of negative + negative = positive isn't universal. In French, double negatives remain negative; consider "Je ne sais jamais rien." The literal translation is "I never know nothing," but the correct translation into English is "I never know anything."

>"I do not think that course of action would be unwise."

That's a funny example, as it can be read both literally ("I like it."), and passive-aggressively ("I don't dislike it."). So while double negatives might not be grammatically incorrect, they are often ambiguous.

This is the kind of stuff the makes writing an art form.

> That's a funny example, as it can be read both literally ("I like it."), and passive-aggressively ("I don't dislike it.").

You seem to have those backward.

"I don't dislike it" is what it literally means. That's the opposite of being passive! "I like it" is reading an implication which isn't literally there and is more passive.

There'a a really important difference here. Someone can not think that something is not unwise, but that does not mean they think it's wise. A double negative does not cancel out - you loose important literal meaning when you do that - not even just an implicit idiomatic meaning.

A double negative in English often is used for emphasis, not to create a positive:

"Not no-how, not no-way!"

English does have double negatives, and they're grammatically correct when used properly. They simply cancel each other out which differs from Spanish where they add emphasis.

Spanish double negatives aren't emphatic, they're 'grammatical'. If you need one ('Nadie lo sabe') you cannot add another one for emphasis, and if you need two ('No lo sabe nadie') you cannot remove one for less emphasis.

Out of curiosity, can you explain the difference in meaning between those two sentences?

It actually depends on your dialect. Many dialects of English use negative concord [1], which is what exists in Spanish and other languages (not emphasis) instead of having them 'cancel each other out'.

For example, in my native dialect, "I ain't never had no need for none of them fancy toys" means "I never had any need for any of those fancy toys". It has nothing to do with canceling out other negatives or emphasis; if one thing is negative, they all need to be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_negative

> They simply cancel each other out

They don't! "I ain't got no bread" means "I haven't got any bread". If they cancelled out it would mean "I have bread".

I meant, it's pretty well reinforced with capitalization or accentuation when speaking ("do NOT! do this").

You're saying in Spanish you can accentuate it like this: "do not, NOT do this"?

That translates to:

Verbatim: "No hagas, NO hagas esto" (Do not, do NOT do this)

"No, no hagas esto" (No, don't do this)

More like this: "No haga nada sin pedirme permiso."

Word for word: "Don't do nothing without asking me for permission."

Meaning: Don't do anything without asking me for permission.

The funny thing is that, in colloquial English, "Don't do nothing without asking me for permission." means "Don't do anything without asking me for permission".

My complaint with English is how there is often no difference between a noun and a verb. Sometimes several words that could be either are stacked and it really trips up my parser. It's also common to see badly translated software where what should have been a verb is translated as a noun, or vice versa.

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