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It it time to give up on grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.?

I never knew that the double negative had such a fan club.

Ambiguity is the enemy of communication. Too often sentences are laced with double meanings. The speaker is invariably trying to avoid saying something and usually ends up saying "I didn't mean that".

I don't mind languages that are colourful or make use of superfluous adjectives of adverbs but they should not run counter to the laws of logic.
How can an era demand anything?
 
¡No entiendo nada! (It's not really illogical. It's just different. What actually bothers you is your own idea that it's illogical, and there's a logical solution to that problem: Get used to it!)
That is a lengthy translation of 3 words and I am skeptical that you have translated accurately.

Something is either true or false and there is nothing in between so get used to that!
 
Something is either true or false and there is nothing in between so get used to that!

Again only if you wish to remain intentionally ignorant of how languages that aren't English work.

"Double negatives" as a linguistic no-no aren't a thing in most languages and those languages don't collapse because they are too confusing.
 
Again only if you wish to remain intentionally ignorant of how languages that aren't English work.

"Double negatives" as a linguistic no-no aren't a thing in most languages and those languages don't collapse because they are too confusing.

They're common in Greek, and those people invented logic ;)
 
That is a lengthy translation of 3 words and I am skeptical that you have translated accurately.

Something is either true or false and there is nothing in between so get used to that!


It's not a translation of anything. It's an example of a double negative that nobody misunderstands.
 
Google translate suggests either: I don't understand anything or I understand nothing. Depending on the context, it might also be: I don't understand what you're saying or I don't get it.
If you look up the words one at a time:
entiendo: I understand
no: not
nada: nothing
 
I will have to take your word for it since I can't find a literal translation of the words.

The most common meaning of the phrase seems to be "I don't understand anything" but since that does not contain a double negative it may not be a literal translation. https://www.linguee.com/spanish-english/translation/no+entiendo+nada.html

Do you deny that other language have "double negatives" in their sentence structure without losing understandability and clarity?

If so, you're wrong. If not this nitpick serves no purpose.

Literally millions of people use languages with "double negatives" everyday without lose of clarity or precision. This is an undeniable fact.

You can not like double negatives as a matter of style or fashion or personal preference, but the argument that it in any objective makes the language les clear or less precise is demonstrably false.
 
Google translate suggests either: I don't understand anything or I understand nothing. Depending on the context, it might also be: I don't understand what you're saying or I don't get it.
If you look up the words one at a time:
entiendo: I understand
no: not
nada: nothing

Much the same in Greek, which also has a word for 'negation of the following', much like the No in Spanish.

(In Greeklish):

Echo tipota - I have nothing.

Dthen echo tipota - Not I have nothing

tipota, meanwhile, does not translate as 'anything' in other contexts, which would avoid the double negative. It's a pure 'nothing' word.

Caution - my command of Greek is carp, but MrsB confirms all this.
 
French too, I think: "Je ne sais pas", "I don't know," with one of the two negations being superfluous: French language: pas


ETA: Maybe it's a Mediterranean thing! :)
 
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And in Afrikaans:


I don't know what it is.

Ek weet nie wat dit is nie.
I know not what it is not.
 
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Afrikaans is a Germanic language so that destroyed my Mediterranean theory ... :)
 
Interesting!
However, this seems to be a very complicated way of denying that it's a double negative:

The second nie cannot be understood as a noun or adverb (as can, e.g., pas in French), and cannot be substituted by any part of speech other than itself with the sentence remaining grammatical. It is a grammatical particle with no independent meaning that happens to be spelled and pronounced the same as the embedded nie, meaning "not", through historical accident.
 
There are also double negatives in Russian. I remember learning a few phrases years ago when I visited Russia, and when I tried to analyze the words I couldn’t understand why there were double negatives. It’s just the way the grammar is in Russian, apparently.

I also know examples of double negatives in both formal and informal Japanese. The adverb “amari” is a negative, but it can go with negatives such as “didn’t eat” - “I didn’t eat not much”.

Also, in informal Japanese “zen zen” means “not at all” and “muri” means impossible. People will say “zen zen muri” which technically means “not at all impossible” but actually is used to mean “completely impossible” and language mavens can squawk all they want about how it is either a double negative or a redundancy. I think I did myself when I was first learning the language and I was not woke to the way language works and expected it to *have* to conform to a prescriptive textbook. When I asked Japanese speakers of the sentence was self-contradictory they would indulge me and say “ha ha yes, I see what you mean but that isn’t the meaning of the sentence.”

Of course double negatives are and were very common in everyday English and in various dialects of English today. They are rarely any more “ambiguous” than most “standard” or “metaphorical” English which most language mavens use unthinkingly knowing that their meaning can be understood well enough.
 
There are also double negatives in Russian. I remember learning a few phrases years ago when I visited Russia, and when I tried to analyze the words I couldn’t understand why there were double negatives. It’s just the way the grammar is in Russian, apparently.

Pretty sure all Slavic languages are like that. in fact there are no rules against stringing any number of negatives.
 
And in Afrikaans:

I don't know what it is.

Ek weet nie wat dit is nie.
I know not what it is not.

I've never thought of that second 'nie' that way. I've only ever considered it as a kind of emphasis of the first one.

"Oral begin mans besef dat hulle nie fyn hoef te wees nie
Dis nie aanvaarbaar om te huil nie
Dis nie aanvaarbaar om te skeer nie
En die enigste tyd toe ons nee se is as hulle vir ons vra of ons genoeg gehad het"
 
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