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Double Negatives

What’s a double negative when it’s at home? This is one in a series of videos designed to help your ESL learners have fun and laugh about some of the things that make the English language unique and confusing. Today it’s the turn of the double negative; that strange quirk of English (and other languages) that means that two negatives when applied to the same subject, result in an affirmative. This is very different from Spanish, which uses a double negative for emphasis. However, Spanish gets a point for helping English to realise that although the ‘official’ double negatives rule is held up in academics, it’s use in informal English (and different dialects of English) is far from the ‘official’ usage. Many famous songs in English, including the one mentioned here, make use of the double negative for style, emphasis and rhythm. ‘We don’t need an education’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it! This language also briefly mentions some unusual - and some would say illogical - uncountable nouns. ‘Furniture’ and ‘fruit’ are both usually uncountable, while ‘vegetables’ and ‘tables’ are countable. Phrasal verbs are also mentioned as an example of the illogical nature of the English language.