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Work Unit 28: La justicia siempre triunfa |
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Emphatic and Unemphatic Negation
Early in this course, you learned how to make Spanish sentences negative by using the word no. In this lesson, we expand on that concept with a series of words for stating the negative. You will use them quite frequently as you speak and write Spanish.
Assignment
Complete the lesson on pages 303-11 of the textbook.
Be sure to complete the exercises. Although copyright rules and fairness
to other students using this book prevent me from publishing all the answers,
you can check the answer page to see an answer
to the first question in each section to help get you started. If you have
any questions, feel free to ask them on the bulletin
board.
Background
In both Spanish and English, we often state the negative with a few words that begin with "n": no (no), nunca (never), nadie (nobody, no one) and nada (nothing). There is, however, one key difference. In English, the use of the double negative, although coommon in informal speech, is considered substandard. Although you might say something like "I don't have nothing" in informal speech to emphasize your lack of possessions, you would never (or should never!) use such a sentence construction in a college paper. But in Spanish, the double negative is perfectly acceptable. No tengo nada is perfectly accepted Spanish; indeed, it's the preferable way of making that statement. In fact, you can have more than two negatives: Yo no le quiero nada de nadie nunca, I never want anything from anybody (literally, I don't never want nothing from nobody).
Another negative word not listed in the textbook is ninguno (sometimes in the form of ningún, ninguna, ningunos or ningunas, meaning "no" (as an adjective), "nothing" or "nobody," depending on the context. The plural forms aren't common.). Here are some examples of sentences using ninguno: No tengo ningún dinero, I don't have any money (although no tengo dinero is more common). Es ninguna belleza, she no beauty. ¿Cuáles prefieres? Ningunos. (Or, more commonly, ¿Cuáles prefieres? Ninguno.) Which ones do you prefer? None of them.
No bebí ninguno, I didn't drink any.
I'm not sure the difference between the emphatic and unemphatic are as great as the text suggests. Although placing a word such as nunca before a verb is stronger than placing no before the verb, the distinction isn't necessarily a strong one.
The use of an ending question as explained in the text is quite common, and a variety of such questions can be used. A statement might be followed simply by ¿sí? or ¿no?, for example. Es muy estúpido, ¿no? He's very stupid, isn't he? Está muy feliz, ¿sí? She's very happy, isn't she?
Coming up
In the next lesson we will look at another group of irregular verbs.
Next page > Sample Answers > Page 1, 2
