Professor Dave again, let’s get negative.
You may remember when your English teacher repeatedly told you that only one negative
is allowed in an English sentence.
If your reply was “that don’t make no sense”, then you weren’t listening.
But either way, this is your chance for revenge, because the Italian language actually requires
double negatives.
In certain cases, you may see a triple or even a quadruple negative in one sentence.
Some clauses, however, will use just one negative.
These are sentences stating simply “not”, or ones starting with the word nessuno, or
niente, which mean no one, and nothing.
But with these examples aside, it’s time to enter the wonderful world of multiple negatives.
Take a look at this list, and see that we will always need the word non, and then these
spaces are where a verb will go, and then there is another word.
Let’s see these in context for more clarity.
This is a cute colloquial expression that is fun to use.
The word “mica” is a Latin word meaning “crumb”, so if you say something like
“non ho mica fame”, you are literally saying: I don’t even have a crumb of a hunger,
which means I am not at all hungry.
This one has four negatives in one sentence.
Just a few more now.
Let’s mention one last thing.
Italian has a negative adjective, and it’s nessuno, which is different from the pronoun
nessuno.
This word literally means “not even one”, and it has different forms which follow the
indefinite article.
But there are no plurals, because the indefinite article doesn’t have any plurals, so let’s see this put to use.
Now that we’ve got our double negatives down, let’s check comprehension.