I don't say anything but it's a missed opportunity to put the old joke about double positive : A linguistics professor said "In English, a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative." A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."
So happy to know you've decided to make long-form content. You're one of my favorite content creators, your way of explaining things is simple yet effective. I will be sharing this video with all my friends who have an interest in linguistics!
Interesting content! I speak Brazilian Portuguese and have noticed how our negative adverb “não” often gets weakened to a short “num” /nũ/ before verbs. That might have been a reason for the second “não” (not weakened) in some dialects, and the consequential loss of the first one. You’re videos are very awesome for language lovers, keep it up!
i mean, we do use all 3 stages, (não [verb], não [verb] não, [verb] não) but thats genuinely a really good way to look at it. sometimes even i catch myself doing it lmao
I think it has to do with how the 'não' before the verb behaves like a clitic, and the freer 'não' after the verb is not a clitic. In Brazilian, we heavily reducr our clitics, that's why!
Yet, the best negations in PtBr don't involve the word '"não". The most emphatic negation we commonly use takes "lá", and in some contexts, it can come before or after the verb, but never both. "Sei lá!" "Eu lá sei!" "Eu lá vi essa pessoa!" "Vou lá nada!" "E eu lá (es)tou pra brincadeira!"
English natives, please use "cannot" to reduce uncertainty at least in important cases. All foreigners will love you just for this little thing. Thank you ;)
im irish and i am only now after realising that i pronounce "can" and "cant" almost exactly the same, apart from the "t", which is often barely there in casual speech. thank you for the tip my guy ill keep it in mind
Most forms of English differentiate "can" from "can't" by always using a reduced/weak vowel in "can" so it's more like "c'n" than "can" while "can't" always has a full wovel. It's actually mostly confusing when you put emphasis on "can" or "can't" because then the vowel is no longer reduced and the only difference is really is the t sound. (Which is why you'd you'd probably also add extra words and also say the word "not" fully when you're saying it with extra emphasis as in "yes, I can" and "no, I can't" or "I cannot" ) It's actually us non native speakers who is most likely to make the difference disappear because, the weakened vowel is not indicated in writing so we tend to accidentally pronounce the vowel in "can" too much. Dr Geoff Lindsey has a youtube video about this "CAN and CAN'T: the importance of Weak Forms"
Bro as someone doing Arabic studies at uni and with a passion for linguistics I have to say I LOVED your shorts so seeing you do long form context like this is awesome. Awesome shout out for making this so accessible! The way you speak clearly with appropriate pauses and good audio makes the auto captions really accurate and they way you highlight parts of words in a consistent system whilst using a really readable font helps so much!!!!
This video is excellent! I just subscribed. I will say, though, as a speaker of both Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole who is very involved in our heritage language movements and who has read countless academic papers and books on them, I can't say I've ever heard the term "Continental Louisiana French." The example would be unmistakably linguistically classified as Louisiana Creole, btw. But you didn't say anything untrue there. I'm excited to see more of your content!
Just did a quick dive into my sources to try to find out where on earth I get continental from, so far no clue. The only thing I’ve seen is one source saying “French-based creoles” so idk where I got that from 😅 I’ll keep looking. Thanks for pointing it out, I’m glad you liked the video!!
It's a melancholy experience reading through a German text and turning the page to find out that the last word of one of their interminable sentences is "nicht."
This was super gripping and easy to follow! Maybe the first non-short of yours I've watched. Thanks for what I'm sure was a LOT of work in making the video so clear and flow so well
fun fact: When I started learning English, I wrongly thought "anything" was a negative term (like nothing), because it's frequent use in negative sentences like "I can't see anything".
I am from the north os Italy, I would say that usually instead of saying ‘non ho mangiato mica’ we say ‘non ho mica mangiato’, but actually we are starting to say ‘mica ho mangiato’, they are all grammatically correct, but I can observe a form of this cycle in act in my own dialect. I think that these long form videos are great, thank you.
Would like to point out that "I don't know nothing" means "I don't know anything" more often than "I know something" and the "nothing" is an intensifier more than anything
@@yuvalneItalian mobsters talked like this in 1900s. I feel like this is just a feature of informal English as a result of Jespersons cycle not necessarily originating from black American English.
Yep, hence the word Catholic, from the Greek Καθολικός, meaning 'universal'. It's κατά and όλος coming together. Interesting that the meaning is now the opposite 🤔
I don’t watch short form content so I’m thrilled that you started long form content and then ended up on my recommended! I’ve sincerely enjoyed both of your videos, learned so much and can’t wait for more!
Another example of Jespersen’s Cycle still happening is in American English: stage one “I don’t care” developed the emphatic form “I couldn’t care less” which has now become “I could care less” for many speakers. As the phrase gained an idiomatic interpretation, speakers reanalyzed “less” as a negative polarity item, like “squat” is the video’s English example. There’s a direct parallel in Spanish too: “no me importa un pepino” or “me importa un pepino.”
As a non-native speaker, I was always so annoyed by “could care less”, but this explanations actually makes sense. It’s not comparison, it’s “I could care naught”. Even if it’s wrong, it’ll give me some peace of mind.
i also think this might be because "i could care less" can be spoken more easily than "i couldn't care less", because a similar thing happened with "head over heels", which feels more smooth to say than the original but logical "heels over head"
5:05 not only that, but a lot of times, that 't is verbally shortened to barely even be a glottal stop, and I've noticed that is sometimes even closer to "i go" in fast spoken English.
6:23 Surprisingly in the Piedmontese language (northwestern Italy), we still use the same types of negative particle used formerly in French. Currently we use mostly "nen" (nothing): "I von nen", or "pa" which is a borrowing from French pas: "I von pa" meaning "I don't go". But "mia" (French mie) and “gota” (French goutte) are also used.
Great content. This is the type of thing that got me into linguistics and also made me avoid it as my major. Love to be shown the variety of phenomena/examples but I would never want to have to remember all those myself...
Additional hypothesis: Sarcasm (by expressing in the positive but meaning the negative) caught on culturally as sarcasm has a big in-person impact, and gradually translated into everyday written and verbal meaning.
2:40 Old Low German isn't actually an older form of Standard German, that'd be Old High German. Old Low German turned into modern Low Saxon and Plautdietsch.
Such a fantastic video! This is an example of the differeces you start to notice when you learn another language, but being just a bilingual at the moment, I’m only scratching the surface. Different languages have different thought processes. The way you show it just talking about how different languages use negation and seeing examples side by side was very insightful and an interesting way to learn. Very fun. Thanks for sharing and hello from Brazil. ❤
0:30 Thank you so much recognizing Brazilian Portuguese, since our language gets too often obscured by Spanish😅 And the sentence "não votou não" (="didn't vote") really tells about Brazilian potitical crisis nowadays: voting is mandatory, yet something about 30% of the population didn't vote in the most recent elections in 2024!
Very interesting video, thank you for making this! I like that you only edited it as much as needed without adding unnecessary effects or music, it's quite refreshing and my attention span grew 3 sizes this day ;)
7:11 As a brazillian portuguese native speaker, i would like to add that the two não in "Não sei não" are actually spoken very differently in informal speech. While it is still written the same way, the first não very commonly loses its nasal sound and tonicity, so in day to day speech "Não sei não" would sound more like [nũ 'sej nɐ̃w̃] on IPA, or even [ɲ 'sej nɐ̃w̃], while the same would sound very weird if it happened to the second não.
Also: my nephew used to live in the interior of Triângulo Mineiro (in the town of Pratinha) and I heard people from there skipping the first "não"! Like this: 1) Porque cê não vai lá em casa ? 2) Porque cê nu vai lá em casa não? 3) Porque cê vai lá em casa não.
num sei não hein! Also I think people here in the Northeast might be further into the Jespersen's Cycle, seeing how we often use não after the verb and not before, especially when answering a question. Fiz não, quero não, vi não, etc. I'm curious to see the perspective of people from other parts of the country.
@@ArgentavisMagnificens I think so! There are multiple papers comparing Northeastern Brazil's proportion of stage 2 and 3 negation with Southeastern and Southern Brazil, and the difference seems to be quite relevant, I recommend taking a look at the papers by Marcos Goldnadel from 2011 and 2017 if you're interested.
So much more fulfilling than a short! It answers so many more of my questions about a topic. I could always look it up, but I’d rather listen to someone more knowledgeable explain it! I didn’t know nothing about this before :)
6:38 omg all of this time I was like “I don’t think of it as step, pas means pas” and then you actually addressed that! High quality content, I yearn for more!
In Venetian language we can have double negations, but also change the position of the negation word. For example "I DIDN'T do it" can be "mi NÓ ło go MIGA fato" , "mi NÓ ło go fato MIGA", "mi MIGA ło go fato", "mi ło go MIGA fato", "mi ło go fato MIGA" or "mi NÓ ło go fato"
5:01 in philadelphia, we pronounce “can” as /ˈkɛn/ and “can’t” as /keən(ʔ)/ so there’s a noticeable distinction even though we don’t pronounce the t. when speaking to people from other places though, we say “cannot” because they don’t understand us
Great video! One thing I’d contest is describing “squat” as an additional negative morpheme, whether emphatic or not. It functions the same as other substantives like “anything,” “something,” and in constructions without an explicit negative (the students learned squat) it’s merely filling the role of “nothing.” While this is somewhat a negation, it doesn’t really behave the same as a true negational morpheme, since “squat” only functions in this capacity if the negational morpheme is itself omitted. Otherwise, it merely operates as an emphatic unspecific demonstrative (“anything” “something”). Also, it can only function in constructions which refer to a lack of something, which is more restrictive than a true negational morpheme. For instance, it can only occur in transitive clauses. You couldn’t say “I want to go to the store squat” in place of “I don’t want to go to the store.” Or “I arrived squat to the interview in time” instead of “I didn’t arrive to the interview in time”
Reminds me of the French t'inquiète, where both the "ne" and "pas" were dropped from "ne t'inquiète pas". To tell someone not to worry, in French, you literally tell them "you-worry".
I don't know if you are French, but I think the difference is that if you want to use the imperative with a positive conotation you should use inquiète toi
in serbian to say "i dont care" you can say "briga me", which literally means "i care" the phrase used to go "nije me briga" but the nije was dropped :D
As a French native, I wanted to highlight the effort you put on your prononciation. I know we have a lot of sounds that english doesn't have, but you did really great! Thank you for this long-form content, I really enjoyed it :)
We tend to make those distinctions by stressing different words. “I can TAKE” vs “I CAN’T take” If you know the concept of weak forms, “can” tends to be a weak form, but “can’t” doesn’t, helping to make the distinction. Geoff Lindsey made a great video on weak forms for those not familiar with the concept.
As a New Zealander, I don't have this problem, since we pronounce "can" and "can't" with different vowel sounds i.e. /kæn/ and /kɑːnt/ rather than /kæn/ and /kænt/ in American English. Same goes for the Australian, South African and most British varieties of English.
In Slavic languages (at least in some) you can construct a sentence fully from negated words, but usually from just one to triple negation (but by using negated forms of the words)
Also, I enjoy these longer videos. I'd like to see more of them -- with even more detail -- but yes, making such videos requires greater preparation. But I'm grateful for the knowledge you're willing to share.
V2 languages complicate things even further. In the German example, the negation appears after the verb due to V2, but if the same sentence were a subordinate clause, the negation would appear before the verb. Also, German, aside from the V2, is mainly SOV. The same pattern occurs in SVO V2 languages like Swedish. In "Hon känner inte honom." (she doesn't know him. Literally: she knows not him), the negation comes after the verb. However, in "Jag vet att hon inte känner honom." (I know that she doesn't know him.), the negation comes before it.
Also, we could split up the verb in the middle so that the negation would appear "in between" the verb. E.g. durchblicken: "Ich blick da nicht durch." Jokes aside, German is very interesting in that regard: I associate double and triple negatives, when understood as reinforcements of the negative, with rural dialects: "Then everybody shut up" would be "Dann hat niemand mehr irgendetwas gesagt" ("Then, no-one said anything anymore") in Standard German. But in a lot of dialects (at least in the South), people would say the dialectal equivalent of "Then, no-one said nothing anymore" ("Dann hat niemand nichts mehr gesagt"). Which, in Standard German, would, strictly speaking, mean that everybody said something (because the double negative results in a positive), but in dialect it just means that nobody said anything (because a double negative denotes a reinforcement of the negative).
I see you're Romanian, and I would like to point out how for your very language: Romanian, the second theory makes more sense Nu ştiu nimic (I don't know nothing=I don't know anything) Nimic(nothing) is there for emphasis, just like his example with "squat" (The students don't know squat) Niciodată să nu spui niciodată.(Never don't say never=Never say never), niciodată(never) also ephasises
I love your longer videos like that ! It's really interesting and really well explained ! As a native french speaker I would like to add the info that even though our negating particule is right after the verb, it's not like we would be waiting for the end of the sentence to know if it's a positive or negative statement, because in the vast majority of cases, the negative particule is placed right after the verb I would even say that it could almost be considered part of the verb and the rest of the sentence's information come after it, for example the direct or indirect objects come after the negating particule, except for personal pronouns but even in that case in everyday speech emphatic structures place pronouns after the verb (for example : j'te parle pas à toi !) and also it's funny noticing that the word "rien" meaning "nothing" can be found in some sayings with its old meaning of "something" an example of that would be "trois fois rien" which means "almost nothing" and most french speakers interprete that as "3 times nothing" whereas it used to mean "3 time something"(implicitly meaning 3x a small something)
15:24 similar thing occurs in Polish: "absolutnie" means "absolutely" in both positive and negative context, but when used as a single word answer to a yes/no question, it means "absolutely not" ("absolutnie nie")
@@patrickarmstrong2492 it is stressed yet it also has pre-fortis-clipping (which means that vowels and nasals before fortis(t or glottal stop, k, p) are noticeably shorter((and thus clipped)
@@OfficeDuck- I've seen that said in the comments, but to my ears, it's the same short 'a'. I've never heard a difference, other than people who say 'cahn't' versus 'can't' (homophonous with 'cant').
I really enjoyed the video and I'm glad you're making longer videos! They're fun (and educational) even as someone who studied linguistics at university! I would love to see a follow up (perhaps a short if it's not worth a full video) about non SVO languages. I've been studying Korean for 14 years and it's SOV, so there can't be post-verbal negation in the same way. You can add negative suffixes (~지마, for example) but that suffix is usually meant as an imperative (하지마 → don't do it/stop) and less as a part of further negation. As the verb comes at the end, there is always going to be that moment of surprise, and as the negation of the whole sentence is required to come after that, you get even more of that surprise. I assume Korean has probably gone through some amount of cycling, but where it's at now it's tricky to compare to French and I don't think it could cycle the same way without major grammatical changes (sentence order being the main thing). I don't know, it's not something I'd previously thought about! I certainly will now, though!
In Brazilian Portuguese we use all three stages (não VERB, não VERB não, VERB não). The first has a more direct and formal connotation and can maybe even sound rude in casual contexts, the second emphasizes the negation and the third has a more informal and friendly connotation. But honestly, I feel like they can all be used interchangeably in some contexts HAHAHA it’s kinda hard to tell the difference sometimes. In addition, I realized that the word “nada” meaning “nothing” can also be used to emphatically negate a verb in informal contexts, for example, “sou nada” means “I’m really not” or “é nada” meaning “it’s really not”. An even more extreme sentence like “ele não estuda nada não” that literally translates to “he does not study nothing not” can be used, basically a triple negation! 😂
No caso, quando a gente usa duas negações com um verbo, uma delas nao está ligada, diretamente "Não falo, não". tem uma virgula ali, não é igual ao francês. Na frase que voce colocou: "Ele não estuda nada, não" realmente tem dupla negação, mas o terceiro também não está ligado a frase. O interessante também é que o "não" nega o verbo e não a frase toda, como em outras línguas.
@@ricardotorresleme11 pois é, o sentido de "não sei, não" é um pouquinho diferente de "não sei", é uma nuance que eu nunca tinha parado pra pensar sobre mas que dá essa ênfase na frase
Apesar que parece mais que no dia a dia assim se alguém for falar "ele não estuda nada não", pelo menos onde eu moro, seria mais fácil cortar uma parte e só dizer "estuda nada não"
In Japanese negative is an adjective and is conjugated by tense (yes, conjugated): taberu = to eat/eat(s)/will eat, tabenai = do(es)n't/won't eat, tabenakatta = didn't eat, compare ureshii = happy, ureshikatta = was happy.
4:54 This is why in British English the vowel sound is usually different in those two words. In fast speech, the "e" in "can" is reduced to a schwa, and the "e" in "can't" is pronounced like the "a" sound in "Card" and is usually stressed.
I love such long and in depth videos, especially when it's about science. I feel like i udnerstand why and how, and that's hopefully your aim with such videos. Please stick to those kind of videos and help us understand linguistic and the history of languages even better.
I think Hindi is in stage one of the cycle, I cannot remember any examples on the top of my head that doesn't use simple नहीं (nahee, last syllable nasalised). However, the sound is indeed getting simplified (depending on the region) as नई (na'ee, with or without nasalisation), which sounds similar to नयी (nayee, often also simplified to na'ee with no nasalisation) which is the feminine version of adjective for new. It could be a regional thing but we rarely pronounce the h in nahee. Depending on your accent, it may also come off as नाई (nā'ee), the word for barber. Again I have to say this could be regional as my region has a quite reputation for messing the pronounciations as I have heard so idk. But there isnt really a need for modification just yet as the other words with similar sounds have pretty different meanings but it is interesting to think if hindi would ever evolve further.
I was going to subscribe because I wanted more... People comment about this as his first long form video so we'll wait for more 😊 Very good at explaining! Repetitions where its important, great visual support, all around fantastic video!
Tunisian Arabic "ma mchitech" mostly translate to "I didn't go". If I wanted to say "I didn't walk" I would either say "ma tmachitech" or I have to add "on foot" so it becomes "ma mchitech 3a sa9aya". Sorry I don't have an Arabic keyboard.
I'm glad you included some Dutch/Flemish examples. I'm from the Flanders region, where most young speaker like me currectly speak 'tussentaal', which you may have heard of (a mix between the old Flemish dialects, which are sadly dying, and the standard language). Though most young speakers don't use them anymore, it's very common to use double negatives in these dialects. You could for example hear something like "'K zou kik da nooit ni doen!" (I would I I (3xpronoun) that never not do=I would never do that), which in standard/Netherlandish dutch would just be "Ik zou dat nooit doen!".
Thanks for that convoluted example. 😄 As an Afrikaans speaker I always thought that Flemish was a bit easier to understand (for me at least) than Dutch when spoken at speed. However that sentence with its triple pronoun would have caused mayhem for me. Afrikaans (derived predominantly from Dutch) would be "Ek sou dit nooit doen nie!". The double negative doesn't add any emphasis, it just sounds weird without it.
Δεν ξερω τιποτα is a better example of a double negative, "I don't know nothing", and it's commonly used in Greek. Δεν ξερω πραμα means "I don't know a thing"
16:10 that's how Japanese is, SOV word order with negation suffixes. And as far as I can tell that's how it's always been. Although emphatic words come before the verb or even placed at the beginning of the phrase
Negation emphasis in Japanese is so strong by itself it never needed a double negative. Though there are quite a bit of standalone negative words like 今更 or 決して.
@@renax72010 Yeah it’s more of a problem in American English though I feel like the A in “can’t” is often pronounced a little bit longer than that in “can” in American English too It’s quite easily distinguishable in Scots (can/cannae)
Usually you can tell by a short pause or glottal stop\ "I can see it" there is no pause between the n and the s... "I can't see it" even if the t isn't pronounced you can head a pause between the n and the s... but when speaking, context queues such as facial expressions and gestures clear up ambiguity
@@bruh-th5ft he literally doesn’t mention that. He talks about emphatic negative markers along the lines of French “pas” such as Eng “squat” but not specifically the double negative of no + nothing which exists in both English and Spanish actually
In brasilian portuguese, the "não" means "not". As you said, we frequently say two "não", sometimes because we want to be emphatic, sometimes because the first "não" wasn't that audible. For example, if someone invite you to go somewhere, and you can't go, you can say "Eu não posso ir" (Means "I can't go". Literaly, "I not can go"). But if the person insists, you will probably say "Eu não posso ir não" (I cant go, but emphatic. Literally, I not can go not). But in another context, if you're talking and you said the "não" so quickly, you can double it. For example, if I say to you "Eu não vou" when I speak like I usually say, I'll probably say something like "Eun sei". The "Não" becomes only a nasal sound, like a "n". So I'll double the "não" and say it calmly, so the other person can understand: "Eun sei não". I'm sorry if I made a mistake in this text, I'm still learning english : ) I hope you understand better my language that I love
@@pOpsi_mOn Simm! E é engraçado porque eu falo MUITO rápido, e as vezes só quem mora comigo consegue entender. Quando eu falo rápido, as vezes eu engulo quase a frase toda kkkkk. Se as vezes eu encurto tanto as coisas grandes, quanto mais um simples não
i never thought of the ـش as a negative fix and understanding the arabic portion of the video was hard because my dialect uses ـش as the feminant 2nd person connected pronouns (instead of ـكِ) so i can only understand the word فيش to mean "on youᶠᵉᵐ"
0:27 that's not just Tunisian Arabic, Egyptians also say mamshetsh but I think it's more ممشتش than ما مشيتش like it's kinda said like it's the same word
It’s also Libyan Arabic, and Sudanese Arabic. It’s common in dialectical Arabic. Dialects are closer to each other than to starndard Arabic. It’s called diaglosa
I don't say anything but it's a missed opportunity to put the old joke about double positive :
A linguistics professor said "In English, a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."
My ahh said Mathematics
Same joke would work in German. "Ja klar". That literally means "yes, clearly", but often gets used in a sarcastic manner just like "yeah right".
@@IdkpleasejustletmechangeitIt happens in other languages as well. In Portuguese, we say "Sim, claro..."
@@geolover908Two positives still make a positive 💀
@@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit??? This joke would work in almost any language, english is not the only one which has sarcasm
Really happy that you're also doing long-form content now!
I totally agree!
Absolutely agree, his presentation style and discussion topics are so impeccable.
Please bro; We NEED these long-form content to continue. You wouldn't even have to figure out how to fit everything within the limit of a short!!
Well yeah but 3 minute shorts are becoming a thing
@@TGOIsReal true.
Yes please I’m an amateur conlanger and videos like this help me so much in making my languages more naturalistic
20 min is considered long now? Bro, we're cooked 💀
@@emanuel3617 yeah, but it doesn't mean we can't sit through it
babe wake up new human1011 long form video
"Babe, it's 3 am. Wtf r u on about? OH SHI--" *dashes to youtube*
So happy to know you've decided to make long-form content. You're one of my favorite content creators, your way of explaining things is simple yet effective. I will be sharing this video with all my friends who have an interest in linguistics!
🥹 thanks!!
You have friends who have an interest in linguistics!? How did you find them?
@@lingandetyrox learning languages , go to the European union of your country , plenty of polyglots to speak about linguistics
@@SieMiezekatze The… European Union… of your country?
A- are you sure you wrote what you meant to write?
youve made me interested in language in a way nobody else in 20 years of school could
ONE OF US ONE OF US
Welcome
Interesting content! I speak Brazilian Portuguese and have noticed how our negative adverb “não” often gets weakened to a short “num” /nũ/ before verbs. That might have been a reason for the second “não” (not weakened) in some dialects, and the consequential loss of the first one.
You’re videos are very awesome for language lovers, keep it up!
i mean, we do use all 3 stages, (não [verb], não [verb] não, [verb] não) but thats genuinely a really good way to look at it. sometimes even i catch myself doing it lmao
Personally i sometimes say just an n, maybe it's also a regional thing
Nsei não, sounds almost like tsei não
I think it has to do with how the 'não' before the verb behaves like a clitic, and the freer 'não' after the verb is not a clitic. In Brazilian, we heavily reducr our clitics, that's why!
@@piptune ohhhhhh
Yet, the best negations in PtBr don't involve the word '"não". The most emphatic negation we commonly use takes "lá", and in some contexts, it can come before or after the verb, but never both.
"Sei lá!"
"Eu lá sei!"
"Eu lá vi essa pessoa!"
"Vou lá nada!"
"E eu lá (es)tou pra brincadeira!"
English natives, please use "cannot" to reduce uncertainty at least in important cases. All foreigners will love you just for this little thing.
Thank you ;)
Since I speak British English, can’t in British is pronounced with a British ar sound for the a, or for Americans the o in comma.
im irish and i am only now after realising that i pronounce "can" and "cant" almost exactly the same, apart from the "t", which is often barely there in casual speech. thank you for the tip my guy ill keep it in mind
@@mmcworldbuilding5994 I like how I could tell you're Irish by the way you used "after" in your response.
Foreigners, learn about silent forms in English.
Most forms of English differentiate "can" from "can't" by always using a reduced/weak vowel in "can" so it's more like "c'n" than "can" while "can't" always has a full wovel. It's actually mostly confusing when you put emphasis on "can" or "can't" because then the vowel is no longer reduced and the only difference is really is the t sound. (Which is why you'd you'd probably also add extra words and also say the word "not" fully when you're saying it with extra emphasis as in "yes, I can" and "no, I can't" or "I cannot" )
It's actually us non native speakers who is most likely to make the difference disappear because, the weakened vowel is not indicated in writing so we tend to accidentally pronounce the vowel in "can" too much.
Dr Geoff Lindsey has a youtube video about this "CAN and CAN'T: the importance of Weak Forms"
Bro as someone doing Arabic studies at uni and with a passion for linguistics I have to say I LOVED your shorts so seeing you do long form context like this is awesome. Awesome shout out for making this so accessible! The way you speak clearly with appropriate pauses and good audio makes the auto captions really accurate and they way you highlight parts of words in a consistent system whilst using a really readable font helps so much!!!!
This video is excellent! I just subscribed. I will say, though, as a speaker of both Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole who is very involved in our heritage language movements and who has read countless academic papers and books on them, I can't say I've ever heard the term "Continental Louisiana French." The example would be unmistakably linguistically classified as Louisiana Creole, btw. But you didn't say anything untrue there. I'm excited to see more of your content!
Just did a quick dive into my sources to try to find out where on earth I get continental from, so far no clue. The only thing I’ve seen is one source saying “French-based creoles” so idk where I got that from 😅 I’ll keep looking. Thanks for pointing it out, I’m glad you liked the video!!
Hey fellow louisianian!
It's a melancholy experience reading through a German text and turning the page to find out that the last word of one of their interminable sentences is "nicht."
The weird thing is Middle High German had double negation. There were negating prefixes like en- but German went a different route apparently.
You deserve more viewers!!! Such a cool and informative video !
This was super gripping and easy to follow! Maybe the first non-short of yours I've watched. Thanks for what I'm sure was a LOT of work in making the video so clear and flow so well
fun fact: When I started learning English, I wrongly thought "anything" was a negative term (like nothing), because it's frequent use in negative sentences like "I can't see anything".
I am from the north os Italy, I would say that usually instead of saying ‘non ho mangiato mica’ we say ‘non ho mica mangiato’, but actually we are starting to say ‘mica ho mangiato’, they are all grammatically correct, but I can observe a form of this cycle in act in my own dialect. I think that these long form videos are great, thank you.
That "mica" ressembles Romanian "ni-mica" Ex: Nu știu nimica - I don't know nothing.
In some places we say "gò mia mangià"
@@polobik4231 Northern Piedmont
Would like to point out that "I don't know nothing" means "I don't know anything" more often than "I know something" and the "nothing" is an intensifier more than anything
especially in black American English, but white American English is obviously also getting affected.
I wanted to point that out too, haha /srs. You should definitely have more likes /srs.
@@yuvalneItalian mobsters talked like this in 1900s. I feel like this is just a feature of informal English as a result of Jespersons cycle not necessarily originating from black American English.
** American dialects only. Hence he specified in standard English "I don't know nothing" means "I know something".
This construction is US specific.
Ah dindu nuthin', mistuh
Funnily enough, in Greek the word καθόλου used to mean "entirely", nowadays it means "not at all"
In Brazilian Portuguese, saying "absolutamente" (absolutely) may also means "not at all"
Yep, hence the word Catholic, from the Greek Καθολικός, meaning 'universal'. It's κατά and όλος coming together. Interesting that the meaning is now the opposite 🤔
@@hieratics Cool!
So does Japanese 全部, although it hasn't entirely lost its original meaning.
Apenas em sarcasmo @@hieratics
I don’t watch short form content so I’m thrilled that you started long form content and then ended up on my recommended! I’ve sincerely enjoyed both of your videos, learned so much and can’t wait for more!
love the long form content gurl keep going queen your eating this up
I didn’t know about this til now. Definetly going to use it in a conlang cuz this is fire
Conlanger based
Another example of Jespersen’s Cycle still happening is in American English: stage one “I don’t care” developed the emphatic form “I couldn’t care less” which has now become “I could care less” for many speakers. As the phrase gained an idiomatic interpretation, speakers reanalyzed “less” as a negative polarity item, like “squat” is the video’s English example. There’s a direct parallel in Spanish too: “no me importa un pepino” or “me importa un pepino.”
As a non-native speaker, I was always so annoyed by “could care less”, but this explanations actually makes sense. It’s not comparison, it’s “I could care naught”.
Even if it’s wrong, it’ll give me some peace of mind.
no shot people actually say could care less
@@tarunyadav3567 It’s very common in American English and would probably be considered the default today.
@@jordankay4754 Wow I didn't know. I haven't heard some one say that before
i also think this might be because "i could care less" can be spoken more easily than "i couldn't care less", because a similar thing happened with "head over heels", which feels more smooth to say than the original but logical "heels over head"
5:05 not only that, but a lot of times, that 't is verbally shortened to barely even be a glottal stop, and I've noticed that is sometimes even closer to "i go" in fast spoken English.
6:23 Surprisingly in the Piedmontese language (northwestern Italy), we still use the same types of negative particle used formerly in French. Currently we use mostly "nen" (nothing): "I von nen", or "pa" which is a borrowing from French pas: "I von pa" meaning "I don't go". But "mia" (French mie) and “gota” (French goutte) are also used.
Really appreciate the effort put into editing all the colours onto the components of each phrase in all the different languages
this video was great!! so good to see longer videos from you, it’d be awesome to see more!
Great content. This is the type of thing that got me into linguistics and also made me avoid it as my major. Love to be shown the variety of phenomena/examples but I would never want to have to remember all those myself...
Additional hypothesis: Sarcasm (by expressing in the positive but meaning the negative) caught on culturally as sarcasm has a big in-person impact, and gradually translated into everyday written and verbal meaning.
Really loved this video! Please more! Would personally love if you could bring in examples from South, East, SE Asia in future videos. Great job!
2:40 Old Low German isn't actually an older form of Standard German, that'd be Old High German. Old Low German turned into modern Low Saxon and Plautdietsch.
Plautdietsch also evolved into pensilvaniya dutch, which is spoken in the US by anabaptist communities.
Such a fantastic video! This is an example of the differeces you start to notice when you learn another language, but being just a bilingual at the moment, I’m only scratching the surface. Different languages have different thought processes. The way you show it just talking about how different languages use negation and seeing examples side by side was very insightful and an interesting way to learn. Very fun. Thanks for sharing and hello from Brazil. ❤
Please continue you long forms, I love these!
I really appreciate the longer format. Exploring these linguistic topics more thoroughly and comprehensively is so much nicer!
this is your best video yet, i’d love to see a part 2 going more in depth
0:30 Thank you so much recognizing Brazilian Portuguese, since our language gets too often obscured by Spanish😅
And the sentence "não votou não" (="didn't vote") really tells about Brazilian potitical crisis nowadays: voting is mandatory, yet something about 30% of the population didn't vote in the most recent elections in 2024!
voting is.. mandatory? how does that work?
Very interesting video, thank you for making this! I like that you only edited it as much as needed without adding unnecessary effects or music, it's quite refreshing and my attention span grew 3 sizes this day ;)
7:11 As a brazillian portuguese native speaker, i would like to add that the two não in "Não sei não" are actually spoken very differently in informal speech. While it is still written the same way, the first não very commonly loses its nasal sound and tonicity, so in day to day speech "Não sei não" would sound more like [nũ 'sej nɐ̃w̃] on IPA, or even [ɲ 'sej nɐ̃w̃], while the same would sound very weird if it happened to the second não.
Yep. I completely agree. The first "não" is much weaker in fast speech.
Also: my nephew used to live in the interior of Triângulo Mineiro (in the town of Pratinha) and I heard people from there skipping the first "não"!
Like this:
1) Porque cê não vai lá em casa ?
2) Porque cê nu vai lá em casa não?
3) Porque cê vai lá em casa não.
num sei não hein! Also I think people here in the Northeast might be further into the Jespersen's Cycle, seeing how we often use não after the verb and not before, especially when answering a question. Fiz não, quero não, vi não, etc. I'm curious to see the perspective of people from other parts of the country.
@@ArgentavisMagnificens I think so! There are multiple papers comparing Northeastern Brazil's proportion of stage 2 and 3 negation with Southeastern and Southern Brazil, and the difference seems to be quite relevant, I recommend taking a look at the papers by Marcos Goldnadel from 2011 and 2017 if you're interested.
"Num sei não"
It is so hard to find interesting long form linguistics content, thank you for the work you put into this!
Your long-form content is amazing your one of my favourite content creaters
So much more fulfilling than a short! It answers so many more of my questions about a topic. I could always look it up, but I’d rather listen to someone more knowledgeable explain it! I didn’t know nothing about this before :)
Your long form content is so interesting!
I’m so happy that you’re posting longer videos! 🥳 Thank you!
Yesss finally, long form language content to feed my hyper fixation. Note it’s this kind of content that led me to major in linguistics
Best breakdown of this topic I've had, so thanks!
Please continue the long videos!
This is an example of why I love the study of language! Thank you for a great job.
6:38 omg all of this time I was like “I don’t think of it as step, pas means pas” and then you actually addressed that! High quality content, I yearn for more!
Not kidding this was the best video I have seen on RUclips in a while. Inspiring.
Wish this video existed when i first started to learn arabic, great explanation!
In Venetian language we can have double negations, but also change the position of the negation word.
For example "I DIDN'T do it" can be "mi NÓ ło go MIGA fato" , "mi NÓ ło go fato MIGA", "mi MIGA ło go fato", "mi ło go MIGA fato", "mi ło go fato MIGA" or "mi NÓ ło go fato"
what is this beautiful human abomination and why do i love it so much
Miga?
I think you are missing an N.
@@Adventeuan That was so funny that i forgot to laugh
@@sovi_2
That's the intended effect
@@Adventeuan Touché
5:01 in philadelphia, we pronounce “can” as /ˈkɛn/ and “can’t” as /keən(ʔ)/ so there’s a noticeable distinction even though we don’t pronounce the t. when speaking to people from other places though, we say “cannot” because they don’t understand us
In California it's something like [kʰæn~kǝn~kn̩] vs. is always [kʰænt(ʰ)].
Hope to see more of these long ones in the future.
Love these long videos, thank you
Great video!
One thing I’d contest is describing “squat” as an additional negative morpheme, whether emphatic or not. It functions the same as other substantives like “anything,” “something,” and in constructions without an explicit negative (the students learned squat) it’s merely filling the role of “nothing.” While this is somewhat a negation, it doesn’t really behave the same as a true negational morpheme, since “squat” only functions in this capacity if the negational morpheme is itself omitted. Otherwise, it merely operates as an emphatic unspecific demonstrative (“anything” “something”).
Also, it can only function in constructions which refer to a lack of something, which is more restrictive than a true negational morpheme. For instance, it can only occur in transitive clauses. You couldn’t say “I want to go to the store squat” in place of “I don’t want to go to the store.” Or “I arrived squat to the interview in time” instead of “I didn’t arrive to the interview in time”
Reminds me of the French t'inquiète, where both the "ne" and "pas" were dropped from "ne t'inquiète pas". To tell someone not to worry, in French, you literally tell them "you-worry".
I don't know if you are French, but I think the difference is that if you want to use the imperative with a positive conotation you should use inquiète toi
in serbian to say "i dont care" you can say "briga me", which literally means "i care"
the phrase used to go "nije me briga" but the nije was dropped :D
Yup I almost texted "t'inquiète" once to a friend who was still learning French, and I realize how much confusing it could be...
I've been watching your shorts for ages but I am delighted to see longer form content about this, its so cool!
Boy, are you underrated!
Loved the long form video! 🔥🔥❤❤
More long-form content.... Please.
Thanks ❤
As a French native, I wanted to highlight the effort you put on your prononciation. I know we have a lot of sounds that english doesn't have, but you did really great!
Thank you for this long-form content, I really enjoyed it :)
4:49 an even better example:
"I can take the dog tomorrow"
When the next word starts with a t, it's SO much harder to distinguish (yet still possible)
We tend to make those distinctions by stressing different words. “I can TAKE” vs “I CAN’T take”
If you know the concept of weak forms, “can” tends to be a weak form, but “can’t” doesn’t, helping to make the distinction. Geoff Lindsey made a great video on weak forms for those not familiar with the concept.
As a New Zealander, I don't have this problem, since we pronounce "can" and "can't" with different vowel sounds i.e. /kæn/ and /kɑːnt/ rather than /kæn/ and /kænt/ in American English. Same goes for the Australian, South African and most British varieties of English.
@@callumc9426 That explains why I haven't heard the kænt form. I'm a life-long American.
In Slavic languages (at least in some) you can construct a sentence fully from negated words, but usually from just one to triple negation (but by using negated forms of the words)
For example, the sentence "Nobody saw anything" in Polish would literally be like "Nobody didn't see nothing" (= Nikt niczego nie widział)
@@TheUrshula yes, also "nikt nigdy nikogo nie nienawidział"
I was scanning comments and it seemed that "NIkdo o tom ještě NIC NEnapsal": literally in Czech "Nobody has not yet written nothing about it" 😊
@@PSCHS_ELTHS 1.nienawidził*, 2. nie is useless here, so its: nikt nigdy nikogo nienawidził
@@aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghasvdghvsjh "nie nienawidział" has different meanings than "nienawidział", and word form might be more rear, but exists
be real, you just said “squat” bc you didnt want to say “jack shit”
So well explained. Subscribed. I don't know why I hadn't before; your shorts have always been so informative.
Already a pro at the long videos!
Also, I enjoy these longer videos. I'd like to see more of them -- with even more detail -- but yes, making such videos requires greater preparation. But I'm grateful for the knowledge you're willing to share.
V2 languages complicate things even further. In the German example, the negation appears after the verb due to V2, but if the same sentence were a subordinate clause, the negation would appear before the verb. Also, German, aside from the V2, is mainly SOV. The same pattern occurs in SVO V2 languages like Swedish. In "Hon känner inte honom." (she doesn't know him. Literally: she knows not him), the negation comes after the verb. However, in "Jag vet att hon inte känner honom." (I know that she doesn't know him.), the negation comes before it.
Also, we could split up the verb in the middle so that the negation would appear "in between" the verb. E.g. durchblicken: "Ich blick da nicht durch."
Jokes aside, German is very interesting in that regard: I associate double and triple negatives, when understood as reinforcements of the negative, with rural dialects: "Then everybody shut up" would be "Dann hat niemand mehr irgendetwas gesagt" ("Then, no-one said anything anymore") in Standard German. But in a lot of dialects (at least in the South), people would say the dialectal equivalent of "Then, no-one said nothing anymore" ("Dann hat niemand nichts mehr gesagt"). Which, in Standard German, would, strictly speaking, mean that everybody said something (because the double negative results in a positive), but in dialect it just means that nobody said anything (because a double negative denotes a reinforcement of the negative).
loving your long form content!
I'd say the weakness hypothesis makes sense for Brazilian Portuguese, as the first não tends to be pronounced like "num"
Not in all regions!
Not really, maybe it's a reginal thing.
I see you're Romanian, and I would like to point out how for your very language: Romanian, the second theory makes more sense
Nu ştiu nimic
(I don't know nothing=I don't know anything)
Nimic(nothing) is there for emphasis, just like his example with "squat" (The students don't know squat)
Niciodată să nu spui niciodată.(Never don't say never=Never say never), niciodată(never) also ephasises
I love your longer videos like that ! It's really interesting and really well explained ! As a native french speaker I would like to add the info that even though our negating particule is right after the verb, it's not like we would be waiting for the end of the sentence to know if it's a positive or negative statement, because in the vast majority of cases, the negative particule is placed right after the verb I would even say that it could almost be considered part of the verb and the rest of the sentence's information come after it, for example the direct or indirect objects come after the negating particule, except for personal pronouns but even in that case in everyday speech emphatic structures place pronouns after the verb (for example : j'te parle pas à toi !) and also it's funny noticing that the word "rien" meaning "nothing" can be found in some sayings with its old meaning of "something" an example of that would be "trois fois rien" which means "almost nothing" and most french speakers interprete that as "3 times nothing" whereas it used to mean "3 time something"(implicitly meaning 3x a small something)
15:24 similar thing occurs in Polish: "absolutnie" means "absolutely" in both positive and negative context, but when used as a single word answer to a yes/no question, it means "absolutely not" ("absolutnie nie")
Also in Japanese with "全然"(zenzen), translate more like "totally", but almost always means negative, especially if comes single.
I'm loving the long-form videos!
some times english double negation actully emhasize the negation rather than cancel out
But I think that's on informal speaking, right? Like "didn't mean no harm"
@@ikarusxvits still english
@@ikarusxvinformal usually drives evolution
@@zackbuildit88 well yes. If a large group of people uses it, it can be accepted as correct.
it is criminal how few good-quality long-form etymology content there is out there like this. love your stuff man
For L2 English speakers, the subtle T in can't is such a challenge. Usually, I recommend people to focus on context to guess
Context, but also stress. “Can’t” tends to be stressed while “can” is often unstressed when it’s followed by a verb.
The A in can and cant are also different, its a lot more noticeable of a difference than the T
The word subtle itself trips me up a lot.
@@patrickarmstrong2492 it is stressed yet it also has pre-fortis-clipping (which means that vowels and nasals before fortis(t or glottal stop, k, p) are noticeably shorter((and thus clipped)
@@OfficeDuck- I've seen that said in the comments, but to my ears, it's the same short 'a'. I've never heard a difference, other than people who say 'cahn't' versus 'can't' (homophonous with 'cant').
I really enjoyed the video and I'm glad you're making longer videos! They're fun (and educational) even as someone who studied linguistics at university! I would love to see a follow up (perhaps a short if it's not worth a full video) about non SVO languages.
I've been studying Korean for 14 years and it's SOV, so there can't be post-verbal negation in the same way. You can add negative suffixes (~지마, for example) but that suffix is usually meant as an imperative (하지마 → don't do it/stop) and less as a part of further negation. As the verb comes at the end, there is always going to be that moment of surprise, and as the negation of the whole sentence is required to come after that, you get even more of that surprise.
I assume Korean has probably gone through some amount of cycling, but where it's at now it's tricky to compare to French and I don't think it could cycle the same way without major grammatical changes (sentence order being the main thing). I don't know, it's not something I'd previously thought about! I certainly will now, though!
In Brazilian Portuguese we use all three stages (não VERB, não VERB não, VERB não). The first has a more direct and formal connotation and can maybe even sound rude in casual contexts, the second emphasizes the negation and the third has a more informal and friendly connotation.
But honestly, I feel like they can all be used interchangeably in some contexts HAHAHA it’s kinda hard to tell the difference sometimes. In addition, I realized that the word “nada” meaning “nothing” can also be used to emphatically negate a verb in informal contexts, for example, “sou nada” means “I’m really not” or “é nada” meaning “it’s really not”. An even more extreme sentence like “ele não estuda nada não” that literally translates to “he does not study nothing not” can be used, basically a triple negation! 😂
No caso, quando a gente usa duas negações com um verbo, uma delas nao está ligada, diretamente "Não falo, não". tem uma virgula ali, não é igual ao francês. Na frase que voce colocou: "Ele não estuda nada, não" realmente tem dupla negação, mas o terceiro também não está ligado a frase. O interessante também é que o "não" nega o verbo e não a frase toda, como em outras línguas.
@@ricardotorresleme11 pois é, o sentido de "não sei, não" é um pouquinho diferente de "não sei", é uma nuance que eu nunca tinha parado pra pensar sobre mas que dá essa ênfase na frase
@@pedropesserl pensar o contrário também, negação seguida mas não ligada "não, não sei"
Essa tripla negação foi foda. Justamente o que eu tava tentando pensar se tinha na língua
Apesar que parece mais que no dia a dia assim se alguém for falar "ele não estuda nada não", pelo menos onde eu moro, seria mais fácil cortar uma parte e só dizer "estuda nada não"
This was a great watch. Loving the longer content!
Another long form video 🎉🎉🎉
As a person who speaks Arabic and learned some French, this video answered many questions that I have forgotten I have asked
Algerian by any chance?
That's like the word "nada" (nothing) in Spanish, "nada" used to mean born (from Nata in Latin) but now it means nothing.
Brilliant video. I love how clear you made the Arabic examples with the transliterations
In Finnish negative is a verb, and it is conjugated by person: En syö = I don't eat. Et syö = You don't eat. Hän ei syö = She/he/it doesn't eat.
WHAT? THAT'S *AWESOME!*
another Finland W fr
In Japanese negative is an adjective and is conjugated by tense (yes, conjugated): taberu = to eat/eat(s)/will eat, tabenai = do(es)n't/won't eat, tabenakatta = didn't eat, compare ureshii = happy, ureshikatta = was happy.
4:54 This is why in British English the vowel sound is usually different in those two words. In fast speech, the "e" in "can" is reduced to a schwa, and the "e" in "can't" is pronounced like the "a" sound in "Card" and is usually stressed.
It’s interesting that knowing squat and not knowing squat mean the same thing 😄
It took me a while to figure out what you were saying 😂😂
I love such long and in depth videos, especially when it's about science. I feel like i udnerstand why and how, and that's hopefully your aim with such videos. Please stick to those kind of videos and help us understand linguistic and the history of languages even better.
I think Hindi is in stage one of the cycle, I cannot remember any examples on the top of my head that doesn't use simple नहीं (nahee, last syllable nasalised). However, the sound is indeed getting simplified (depending on the region) as नई (na'ee, with or without nasalisation), which sounds similar to नयी (nayee, often also simplified to na'ee with no nasalisation) which is the feminine version of adjective for new. It could be a regional thing but we rarely pronounce the h in nahee. Depending on your accent, it may also come off as नाई (nā'ee), the word for barber. Again I have to say this could be regional as my region has a quite reputation for messing the pronounciations as I have heard so idk. But there isnt really a need for modification just yet as the other words with similar sounds have pretty different meanings but it is interesting to think if hindi would ever evolve further.
actually it had happened once in history
its the 2nd time
also that n is voiceless now. like nha.
I was going to subscribe because I wanted more... People comment about this as his first long form video so we'll wait for more 😊
Very good at explaining! Repetitions where its important, great visual support, all around fantastic video!
Tunisian Arabic "ma mchitech" mostly translate to "I didn't go". If I wanted to say "I didn't walk" I would either say "ma tmachitech" or I have to add "on foot" so it becomes "ma mchitech 3a sa9aya". Sorry I don't have an Arabic keyboard.
Yeah this the same in Libyan Arabic
I'm glad you included some Dutch/Flemish examples. I'm from the Flanders region, where most young speaker like me currectly speak 'tussentaal', which you may have heard of (a mix between the old Flemish dialects, which are sadly dying, and the standard language). Though most young speakers don't use them anymore, it's very common to use double negatives in these dialects. You could for example hear something like "'K zou kik da nooit ni doen!" (I would I I (3xpronoun) that never not do=I would never do that), which in standard/Netherlandish dutch would just be "Ik zou dat nooit doen!".
Thanks for that convoluted example. 😄 As an Afrikaans speaker I always thought that Flemish was a bit easier to understand (for me at least) than Dutch when spoken at speed. However that sentence with its triple pronoun would have caused mayhem for me. Afrikaans (derived predominantly from Dutch) would be "Ek sou dit nooit doen nie!". The double negative doesn't add any emphasis, it just sounds weird without it.
Δεν ξερω τιποτα is a better example of a double negative, "I don't know nothing", and it's commonly used in Greek. Δεν ξερω πραμα means "I don't know a thing"
Thanks for pointing that out! Just fixed it, I think I used the Cretan dialect in the thumbnail for some reason 😅
Same happens in português. " Eu *não* sei *nada* "
I love these long form videos! keep it up!
16:10 that's how Japanese is, SOV word order with negation suffixes. And as far as I can tell that's how it's always been. Although emphatic words come before the verb or even placed at the beginning of the phrase
Yeah, I'm really interested in this - most examples the author used are SVO, and it seems like it should work entirely differently in SOV languages
Negation emphasis in Japanese is so strong by itself it never needed a double negative.
Though there are quite a bit of standalone negative words like 今更 or 決して.
oh my god i didnt expect a full length human1011 video
For a non-native speaker like me, the case with “can” and “can’t” in English feels really absurd
can and can't are easier to distinguish in uk english. can and cahnt in my dialect
@@renax72010What’s your dialect
@@renax72010 Yeah it’s more of a problem in American English though I feel like the A in “can’t” is often pronounced a little bit longer than that in “can” in American English too
It’s quite easily distinguishable in Scots (can/cannae)
@@junkvideos4527 I meant /kæn/ and /känt/ as in completely different vowels
Usually you can tell by a short pause or glottal stop\
"I can see it" there is no pause between the n and the s... "I can't see it" even if the t isn't pronounced you can head a pause between the n and the s... but when speaking, context queues such as facial expressions and gestures clear up ambiguity
I already knew about the evolution of French negation, but you added so much new interesting info!!! great vid
You forgot to mention a lot of English speakers in the US DO use double negation! For example: “I don’t know nothing”!
bro didn't watch the video
@@bruh-th5ft he literally doesn’t mention that. He talks about emphatic negative markers along the lines of French “pas” such as Eng “squat” but not specifically the double negative of no + nothing which exists in both English and Spanish actually
i don't know no nothing bout no ice I'm just cold, forty-something milly subs or so I've been told
@@holycrusader9268this is so me when I listen to that new KSI while watching Talk Tuah and eating Lunchly 🗣️🗣️🗣️
In brasilian portuguese, the "não" means "not". As you said, we frequently say two "não", sometimes because we want to be emphatic, sometimes because the first "não" wasn't that audible. For example, if someone invite you to go somewhere, and you can't go, you can say "Eu não posso ir" (Means "I can't go". Literaly, "I not can go"). But if the person insists, you will probably say "Eu não posso ir não" (I cant go, but emphatic. Literally, I not can go not).
But in another context, if you're talking and you said the "não" so quickly, you can double it. For example, if I say to you "Eu não vou" when I speak like I usually say, I'll probably say something like "Eun sei". The "Não" becomes only a nasal sound, like a "n". So I'll double the "não" and say it calmly, so the other person can understand: "Eun sei não".
I'm sorry if I made a mistake in this text, I'm still learning english : )
I hope you understand better my language that I love
O não vai virando só um som nasal muito curto, eu acho legal isso
@@pOpsi_mOn Simm! E é engraçado porque eu falo MUITO rápido, e as vezes só quem mora comigo consegue entender. Quando eu falo rápido, as vezes eu engulo quase a frase toda kkkkk. Se as vezes eu encurto tanto as coisas grandes, quanto mais um simples não
i never thought of the ـش as a negative fix and understanding the arabic portion of the video was hard because my dialect uses ـش as the feminant 2nd person connected pronouns (instead of ـكِ) so i can only understand the word فيش to mean "on youᶠᵉᵐ"
Well done, well structured, well presented. Thanks for all your hard work. ❤
0:27 that's not just Tunisian Arabic, Egyptians also say mamshetsh but I think it's more ممشتش than ما مشيتش like it's kinda said like it's the same word
Nice!
Informative
It’s also Libyan Arabic, and Sudanese Arabic. It’s common in dialectical Arabic. Dialects are closer to each other than to starndard Arabic. It’s called diaglosa
Also Moroccan, Algerian and Jordanian