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:
“He utters substantial English thoughts in plainest English dialects.... Indeed, for fluency and skill in the use of the English tongue, he is a master unrivaled. His felicity and power of expression surpass even his special merits as historian and critic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The English winter—ending in July,
To recommence in August.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“A blind man will not thank you for a looking-glass.”
—Eighteenth-century English proverb. Collected in Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)