Double Negatives
Okay, so it’s really cool when the rap songs dish out phrases such as “I ain’t doing nothing; I didn’t kill nobody…” But, in the written world, it makes ‘opposite’ sense! Analyse it. “I didn’t kill nobody,” actually means that “I did kill somebody”.
Interestingly, in Afrikaans and Greek, double negatives are used to make sense of what the rappers actually mean – or do the rappers mean that they did kill someone???
So, in future, use only one negative if you mean ‘negative’. EG: “I do not have any money” is correct (if you’re broke!); “I do not have no money” is incorrect.
Next week:
Apostrophe
The week after:
Split infinitives