Hello Clemens, On Tue, 13 Aug 2002 00:15:25 +0200 GMT (13/08/02, 05:15 +0700 GMT), Clemens 'Gullevek' Schwaighofer wrote:
CGS> Be careful with double negative, for me as a viennese it can mean CGS> something double bad, and not make it okay ... Speaking of double negatives, there is different usage in different languages. While in "High" German, a double negative means positive, I didn't even know that in Vienna, a double negative is more negative than a single negativ. ;-) But you are making my point, read on. In Spanish, the double negative is used to express the simple negative: "el no me dice nada" - literally, "he doesn't tell me nothing" - means, of course, "he doesn't tell me anything". Which brings us to English: the first translation from Spanish into English above, while grammatically incorrect, is widely used in certain circles is the US. (Also, "he don't tell me nothing" is not unheard of, which is linguistically quite an interesting development of the language.) So is the double negative synonymous to a single negative, or rather to a positive? The answer appears to depend on the cultural background, even within the English-speaking community. What I am saying is that the double negative should be avoided in English, as otherwise nobody won't understand nothing! ;-) f'up2:tbot. -- Cheers, Thomas. Moderator der deutschen The Bat! Beginner Liste. For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs. Message reply created with The Bat! 1.62/Beta1 under Chinese Windows 98 4.10 Build 2222 A using an AMD Athlon K7 1.2GHz, 128MB RAM ________________________________________________________ Current version is 1.61 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
