http://www.makepovertyhistory.org.nz beautiful monsters: Hee...

April 25, 2004

Hee...

You've probably heard this one before, but it still makes me giggle.

A linguistics professor was lecturing his class one day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. However it is interesting to note that there is not a single language in which a double positive can imply a negative."

To which a sceptical student at the back of the lecture theatre responded, "Yeah, right."

Posted by Fionnaigh at April 25, 2004 12:30 AM
Comments

*giggles*

Russian you can actually go as far as to have a triple negative. It's actually grammatically incorrect to use just the one in some cases.

Posted by: Missiedith at April 27, 2004 01:05 AM