Double Negative - English

English

In standard written English, when two negatives are used in one sentence, the negatives are understood to cancel one another and produce a weakened affirmative. However, in many dialects, the second negative is employed as an intensifier and should be understood as strengthening the negation rather than removing it.

Read more about this topic:  Double Negative

Famous quotes containing the word english:

    A blind man will not thank you for a looking-glass.
    —Eighteenth-century English proverb. Collected in Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)

    Take heed of enemies reconciled, and of meat twice boiled.
    Collected in John Ray, English Proverbs. English proverb (1670)

    An English family consists of a few persons, who, from youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)