don't sign nothing

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naleeni

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I agree with Anglika. Nevertheless, when students come across music lyrics that uses such terms, we as teachers are obligated to answer them as honestly as possible.

A snatch of a song I recently heard with my own children, prompted me to explain to them. It was Michael Jackson's unreleased song, where part of the lyrics was, 'take me to a place without no name'.

I told them that it was wrong in grammar to use a double negative like that.
 

hiyam

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as an english teacher i'll correct this sentense since students need really to folllow the grammatical rules because otherewise they are lost. people on the street usually do lots of mistake but they don't notice but ESL students have to study the "correct" way first and then they can be exposed to "different" kind of ways.
 

Zelda Butterchunks

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The correct way to say this is "Don't sign anything." We don't use double negatives in English. "Don't" and "nothing" are both negatives. "You should sign nothing" and "You should not sign anything" are both correct and mean the same thing. Each sentence has only one negative word. Can you find the negatives?
 

Nightmare85

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**Neither a teacher nor a native speaker.**

Hello guys,
I would like to add my neutral opinion :)
(To be honest: I have not checked all the replies in this thread yet.)
I believe in such a case it's better to use the version that is 100% correct.
Although, "Don't sign nothing!" is common and pretty understandable, it's also questionable.
However, "Don't sign anything!" is fully correct and I doubt that anyone will say it's not correct English.
The rules say: "Use any when it's a negative sentence."
I don't need any dreams.
Don't sign anything!
He doesn't have any clue.


Personally, I would understand all these sentences if they contained no/nothing.
I'm sure almost no one will say, "I don't need no dreams." if he actually means "I need dreams."

As said: My neutral opinion :)
(Sorry if this topic is already fully clear to anyone ;-))

Cheers!
 
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