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Funnily enough, in Russian the double negative is completely normal and that is a normal way to express many negatives. It always triggers my brain when I have
by nosianu 5y ago
Funnily enough, in Russian the double negative is completely normal and that is a normal way to express many negatives. It always triggers my brain when I have to say a double negative in Russian, "just do it, it's completely normal, don't worry about it..." (inner feeling-based monologue).
https://www.russiantutoring.com/post/double-negation-in-russian-when-one-person-s-no-is-another-s-yes https://www.russiantutoring.com/post/double-negation-in-russ...
- Latty 5y agoReminds me of a classic linguistics joke (I assume from a Tom Scott video given where I encounter linguistics the most): A professor is lecturing on linguistics: "In English a double negative has a positive meaning. However, in some languages—such as Russian—a double negative still has a negative meaning. There isn't, however, a language in which a double positive holds a negative meaning." A student in the back responds: "Yeah, right."
- ratzkewatzke 5y agoThis is widely attributed to Sidney Morgenbesser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser).
- eyelidlessness 5y agoThis reminds me of ruminations with a friend about the nuance of combined positive/negative affirmations. Eg “no yeah” used as an emphatic agreement in the positive, and “yeah no” an emphatic agreement in the negative.
- mananaysiempre 5y agoThe high-brow name for this syntactic gadget is “negative concord”[1], and Wikipedia lists plenty of languages that have it[2] (including several European ones and even Old English!). [1] http://glottopedia.org/index.php/Negative_concord http://glottopedia.org/index.php/Negative_concord [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_negative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_negative