Is multiple negation, in English, often appropriate to the situations in which it occurs?
No, no, no, no, no!
A thousand times no!
MrP
two no’s make a “yes” (like -(-x) = +x)
so, a thousand times “no” means “yes” in the end :lol: (an optimistic view)
I’ve heard native speaker say things like “it doesn’t mean nothing” so it seems that double negation is quite common in colloquial spoken English.[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, photographs: At a truck factory[YSaerTTEW443543]
1000 no’s multiplied by themselves would make a yes:
-1 to the 1000th is 1. lol
I’ve heard the same, and I’m wondering whether anyone here thinks such usage could be appropriate to the situations in which it occurs.
you guys will hear things like “it doesn’t mean nothing” all the time down here
or, worse, “it don’t mean nothing”.
How about: I ain now nuttin’
Or: I ain own nobody nuttin’
in both of those just replace “ain’t” with “don’t” – some down here might say “I don’t know nothin’” or “I don’t owe nobody nothin’”.
“ain’t” generally takes the place of “haven’t”, “hasn’t”, “aren’t”, “isn’t”, etc.:
-
I ain’t going to the show tonight.
-
He ain’t done his homework yet.
-
They ain’t eaten their beans yet.
-
They ain’t going to the game.
What’s bad about the first one?
Hi, Tom
And now I have a conundrum for you, take a close look at this sentence:
Not only did they not come, they even did not bother to call and tell us they were not coming
Can you rephrase the first clause to rectify the double negative gaffe ? 
Hi Alex
I might “rectify” things by relocating the word even:
Not only did they not come, they didn’t even bother to call and tell us they weren’t coming. 
By the way, I’d say you’d be far more likely to hear “He don’t know nothing” than “He doesn’t know nothing”. :lol:
.
- He is not unusual.
- He doesn’t know nothing = he knows something (emphatic denial that he knows nothing)
- He doesn’t know nothing = he doesn’t know anything.
The double negation in #1 and #2 is standard English; though some people dislike the form of #1.
Double negation of the #3 kind is a shibboleth, for many speakers: if you were investing a large sum of money in someone’s business, it would be looked upon kindly; but in e.g. an interview, it might have a (doubly) negative effect.
MrP
Alex – sorry I didn’t answer sooner
Amy made the necessary correction. (as usual)
Though it ain’t quite perfect, I’m impressed with your sentence.
T
…and i didn’t go quite far enough in one of the above posts when I gave this as an example:
“They ain’t eaten their beans yet.”
To some down here, it would be even worse:
“They ain’t ate their beans yet.”
Not with Sir Alan Sugar, it wouldn’t.
Is an interview a siutation where multiple negation normally occurs? If so, which type of interview? If not, where does it normally occur?
No, hell no.
Professional interviews tend to be fairly formal – at least you can bet that the interviewer will be fairly formal.
And if the interview is on television, the interviewer will try her darnedest to not make a single mistake.
How many Sir Alan Sugars are there?
MrP
More than the prescritivists would have us believe. When you’ve been around business people a long time, you know that the scare-tactics of so called educationalists wanting to sell their standardised English product are not always worth worrying about. If you want a certain candidate enough, you don’t often choose him/her for his abilities in standard grammar. See the last two episodes of The Apprentice (Brit version) for one example of such.
Spanish “business people” or English “business people”?