Mesaĝoj: 16
Lingvo: English
darkweasel (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-11 12:38:33
R2D2!:It just means something different: in Spanish, the sentence is negative, while in English and Esperanto it's positive.Pharoah:(like they do in Spanish for example)Actually a Spanish-like usage would be something like
*“Mi ne faras nenion” (No estoy haciendo nada / I'm not doing nothing).
Although it is “correct” in Spanish, it is incorrect in both English and Esperanto.
—Ilhuıtemoc
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-11 13:50:58
darkweasel:It just means something different: in Spanish, the sentence is negative, while in English and Esperanto it's positive.Actually in English it carries two meanings - either a negative one or a postive one, depending on what was said before.
Examples:
Mother: "Honey what are you doing?"
Cowboy Child: "I aint doin' nothin'!
however,
Wife: "You're doing nothing staying home all day, go find a job!"
Disgruntled husband: "I'm not doing nothing! (followed by various excuses etc)".
"I'm not doing nothing" sounds a lot more negative when said with an American accent though, as majority of British commonwealth speakers don't really use double negatives.
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-11 18:53:06
Iĉo:Nah, I never could get into the bill... something about the theme music. But I can actually imagine that now that you mention. I think I'll correct myself by saying that double negatives are to some extent associated with Americanismsceigered:Cowboy Child:LOL!
ceigered:as majority of British commonwealth speakers don't really use double negatives.You've never watched The Bill, have you? "I ain't done nuffin". Or Vicky Pollard in Little Brittain "I ain't not neven done nuffin." / "I don't know nuffin about nuffin"
. darkweasel (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-12 13:41:02
But what do I know? 
Ironchef (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-12 14:56:19
darkweasel:As far as I know, in English double negatives turning into a negative is a pure dialect thingOne of the things I hear all the time here (New England) that makes me cringe (I'm from London), is when people say:
"You know, I could care less about him!"
(to which I want to say, "Well if you could, then please do!")
I was always brought up with the phrase:
"I could not care less about him!"
(in the sense if, I already care so little about him, I could not possibly care any less).
benanhalt (Montri la profilon) 2009-novembro-05 07:19:41
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archive...
Incidentally, it was interesting to learn that that was the process by which "pas" became a negative in French. I love Language Log.