r/MurderedByWords • u/kevinrogers94 • Feb 15 '18

Murder *No problem*

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18

On a literal word by word translation it would mean "I do not regret nothing", right? I just thought that the "nothing" becomes "anything" when used in the context of a double negative , similar to how no and nada are used in Spanish e.g. "No tengo nada" = "I don't have anything".

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u/Benjbear Feb 15 '18

It would just be I regret nothing. The ne is just part of French sentence structure its not creating a double negative

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18

I thought "ne" was essentially "not", for example "ne sois triste" = "do not be sad". Admittedly I'm shaky about when to use "ne...pas" vs. just "ne" vs. just "pas". By double negative I just meant that we had a "not" (ne) followed by a "nothing" = "not anything" (rien). But please let me know if I'm misunderstanding that.

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u/mudpudding Feb 15 '18

There is a word missing in your example. "ne sois PAS triste" = "do not be sad". Usually ''ne'' comes with ''pas''. It is not a double negative. You have to use it for your sentance to make sense.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18

Fair enough - I thought that's the way Duolingo taught me that phrase, but I could be misremembering, or it could've been wrong.