www.alphadictionary.com

I'm glad to see you here, Anders. I was going to send you an email, but I see that's not necessary.

No, I wasn't invited by Dr. Language. I guess I'm a persona non grata.

Brazilian dude

I think Dr. Language just popped in real quick to the old Agira to tell as many as possible about the great news, and emiled those whose emails he had in his personal addressbook.

Katy

A professor of English is giving a lecture in an introductory course. He explains that in the English language (which is unlike many other languages in this respect) a double negative equals a positive declaration.

He pauses, and says, "It just occurred to me that in English there is no such thing as a double positive that equals a negative."

Someone in the back of the room raises his voice and says, "Yeah. Right."

Very good joke, Eric!

Apo

funny, it takes a second or two to pick up on.

Katy

Slavic and Baltic languages can have double or even triple negatives, still meaning no more than a Germanic single negative.

The heaped negation is in fact unique to Balto-Slavic languages among the IE ones: Latv. vins nekad neka nezina ’he never knows anything’ = Ru. on nikogda nitchego ne znaet.

"Regardless" means "without regard to". "Irregardless" simply says the opposite. Webster's says the latter originated under the influence of "irrespective". It does not however condemn it, merely recording that it is used primarily in speech.

Verbum

ive heard that English and Mandarin are the only (well-known) languages that observe the logical neg+neg=pos construction.

Unfortunately, if an 'incorrect' usage is more common than a 'correct' one, the names don't apply any more.

ive heard that English and Mandarin are the only (well-known) languages that observe the logical neg+neg=pos construction.

. . .

Oh, Lord; I think I just marked myself as a hopeless technophile. Even though Calculus was my first academic downfall, I think I perceive an algebraic explantion for the double-negative conundrum.

In languages where a double- or triple-negative merely marks an increasingly negative meaning, this amounts to an additive algorythm; the sum of any number of negative numbers is always negative, and increasingly so.

In languages where a double-negative equals a positive and a triple negative equals a negative, this amounts to a multiplicative algorythm; the product of two (or an even number of) negative numbers is always positive, the product of three (or an odd number of) negative numbers is alway negative.

I leave it to the linguistic theoritians amongst us to explain how i, the imaginary number corresponding to the square root of -1, comes into play here.

ive heard that English and Mandarin are the only (well-known) languages that observe the logical neg+neg=pos construction.

Unless there is a subtle nuance escaping me here, I think it is hard to find languages outside the Slavic sphere that don't make a negative negate a previous negative. I find for example that English and Mandarin double negatives translate in the same way into Swedish.

In spoken Dutch (or maybe it's a Flemish thing?) everyone uses multiple negatives the Russian way. In written Dutch, however, it's considered wrong.

Yeah, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan and Romanian also have double and triple negatives. French doesn't have them and supposedly neither Italian, but you can find them in "substandard" Italian.

Portuguese: Não vejo nunca ninguém interessante aqui.*
Spanish: No veo nunca a nadie interesante aquí.*
Catalan: No veig mai ningú interessant aquí.
Romanian: Nu văd niciodată nimeni interessant aici.
Colloquial Italian: Non vedo mai nessuno d'interessante qui.
English: I don't never see nobody interesting here.

*These two sentences are normally rendered Nunca vejo ninguém interessante aqui/Nunca veo a nadie interesante aquí.

Brazilian dude

And I would also like to point out that Stargzer's post was pure genious. His comment is corroborated by Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage, which states, among other things under the heading double negative:

"...It was later and lesser grammarians that made absolute the dictum about two negatives making a positive. From the absolute position that the statement is based on logic. As Lamberts 1972 has pointed out, it all depends on what logic you choose. Two negatives may make a positive in the logic of Latin grammar, but not in the logic of algebra: -a + =a = -2a. Algebraic logic yields approximately the same results as the old multiple negative - simply a stronger negative..."

Brazilian dude

REMEMBER: Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do!

Yeah, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan and Romanian also have double and triple negatives. French doesn't have them and supposedly neither Italian, but you can find them in "substandard" Italian.

Beg to differ, Braz; French does indeed do dem double don'ts (ne pas fumer, je ne sais rien = don't not smoke/I don't know nothing).

My pet peeve in this heading is "could care less" to mean exactly the opposite.

Stargzer, your thinking on this topic is neither unlucid nor unfascinating