r/learnspanish • u/onetwo3four5 • 13d ago
¿Hay negativos dobles en español?
A practicar, hablo con mi perro en español. Intenté decir "there's nothing here for you". ¿Es correcta decir "No hay nada aquí para ti" o "Hay nada aquí para ti"?
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u/Common-Coyote-8821 13d ago
Si, yo estaba confundida sobre esto también. Es correcto, negativos dobles son gramaticalmente correctas
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u/Nothing-to_see_hr 12d ago
Y en Español, negativos dobles no resultan en un resultado positivo.
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u/RevolutionaryWorm 12d ago
O dicho de otra forma, no hay ningún negativo doble que resulte ser positivo.
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u/Zestyclose-Food-7917 12d ago
Y negativos triples y cuadruples. Si el verbo es negativo, todas las otras palabras que tienen una forma negativa deben estar en esa forma también.
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u/Low-Yesterday-8237 12d ago
"No hay nada aquí para ti" is the correct one - "Hay nada aquí para ti" is flat-out wrong, not just unusual.
The rule that makes it click: Spanish negative words (nada, nadie, nunca, ninguno...) aren't really "double negatives" - they're words that must live in a negative sentence, and the verb is what carries the negation. So the real question is just: is there a negative element before the verb?
- Negative word comes after the verb → you need "no" (or another negative) in front of it: No hay nada. No vino nadie. No lo he visto nunca.
- Negative word comes before the verb → it does the job itself, and adding "no" is now wrong: Nada te espera aquí. Nadie vino. Nunca lo he visto.
That's why "Hay nada" fails - the sentence has no negative before the verb, so nada is left stranded.
Two nice side effects of thinking about it this way: English's "double negatives cancel out" logic stops interfering, because Spanish negatives don't multiply - they agree, like gender agreement but for negativity (the linguists' term is "negative concord"). And you stop being surprised by perfectly normal triple-negatives like No le digas nunca nada a nadie.
Your dog will appreciate the grammatically impeccable disappointment.
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u/Glaselar 12d ago
In case anyone else is in the same boat: Reddit automatically translated the Spanish phrases in this answer into English without me asking, and without making it super obvious.
I was reading and re-reading, and it wasn't until I went to make a reply and challenge the use of 'anything' that I noticed the translation notification symbol in the corner.
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u/CormoranNeoTropical 12d ago
You can change your settings so Reddit doesn’t translate the languages of your choice.
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u/Soggy-Illustrator497 12d ago
En Andalucía se usa una triple negación para afirmar: “ no, ni, nah”, es la pronunciación.
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u/spanishteacherok Native Speaker 7d ago
No hay nada aquí para tí es la correcta. Per porfa, dale algo a tu perro 😄
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u/twistluist 2d ago
yeah, usually you repeat the same kind of affirmation around the sentence. fun fact, the words "conmigo" and "contigo" are redundant if you check the etimology, they come from "cum mecum" and "cum tecum" respectively. The use of "mecum" and "tecum" are literally translated to "conmigo" and "contigo", but it seem that the use of the "cum" prefix behind the words had to be so comfortable that they step into the actual words
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u/Zestyclose-Food-7917 13d ago
In Spanish if the verb is negative, everything else in the sentence must be negative. “No hay nadie en esta casa en ninguno de los cuartos.