English Grammar: Fix your double negatives!

Hello. Welcome to this lesson. I'm going to teach you something called "double negatives".

Now, maybe you don't use double negatives, which is cool and good and amazing, and you

don't want to use double negatives. So, I'm going to tell you first of all what double

negatives are. Double negatives mean you have one sentence with two words that are both

negative words. For example:

"I don't have nothing." So, "don't" and "nothing" are both

negative words. So, this might have something to do with math, which I'm not good at. If

you don't have nothing, actually you have something. I'm not too sure how that works

out, but you don't want to use double negatives because two negatives make a positive.

So, we hear double negatives all the time. "I can't get no satisfaction..." Can't get

no...? Can't... "Can't get no" is a double negative. So,

whoever sang this song, Mick Jagger,

terrible grammar. What are you...? What are you teaching us, here? Good old lips.

So, one thing I'm going to do is you have to be very, very, very careful about certain

words in English, like this word: "ain't". I hate this word. As soon as someone says

to me: "I ain't got nothing." I'm not talking to that person probably again. If you use

the word "ain't", it just makes you seem very uneducated. People who say these words, they

sound stupid. Maybe your favourite rapper uses it a lot. Are they stupid? Hmm. So, it's

cool if they do it, but be careful you don't because you don't want to sound stupid. So,

I'm going to give you the examples. Now, the ones in black are bad, don't use them. The

red pen is the right pen.

So, if we look at the first example: "He ain't no teacher." He ain't no teacher, G, yo. We

can't say: "ain't". "Ain't" is not even a word in English. If you look in the dictionary,

it's not there. It's really, really, really, really slang, and it's bad. So, "ain't", I

want you to take this word out of your head, and I want you to say: "He isn't". You've

learned this before, you used the verb "to be", so you're going to say: "He isn't the teacher."

He ain't no teacher, yo. Yeah, you ain't no teacher either. I'm the teacher,

and you have to say: "He isn't a teacher."

Next one: "She ain't got no class." [Laughs] Which is true. Now, "class" means refinement

or the way you were brought up. So, if you ain't got no class, your momma didn't raise

you right. This means that you were basically were not educated well. We have to say:

"She has no class." Okay?

So, the difference is that she... We can't use "ain't", we have

to use "has no". When we use "teacher", we have to use an adjective. We have to use "to be".

Sorry. When we say "teacher", we have to use the verb "to be", but when we say "got",

we have to use "has", because this is a noun. Okay? If it's a job, we use "to be", and if

it's a noun, we use "has". If it was "I", we would say "have". So you can check out

a lesson that I've done before between "had", "have", and "has".

"I ain't been nowhere." I ain't been nowhere. Hmm. Well, no. You have to say:

"I haven't been anywhere."

So, it's kind of confusing in English when we use "any". So, I'm going

to teach you in this part of the lesson when to use "any". It's easy once you get it. So,

you don't want to say: "I ain't been nowhere." You... You have to say: "I haven't been anywhere."

So, "any"... Once you get this, it's going to be easy for you. We use "any" only if your

sentence is negative or if you are asking a question. For example:

"Do you have any pizza?"

Now, I'm not going to say: "I ain't got no pizza."

I'm going to say: "I don't have any pizza."

Okay? You can also say: "I don't have anything." You can't say:

"I don't have nothing." So, we have to change "nothing" to "anything", because "any", we have to use

with our negative sentence.

"I don't know no one or nobody." They're the same. You have to say: "I don't know anyone."

Because we have "don't", we can... We have to use "anyone". You can say: "I do know someone",

but that's a positive and we're good.

"I don't want to go nowhere." That means you want to go somewhere. So, you have to say:

"I don't want to go anywhere." So, if it's a question or if it's a negative sentence,

all we're going to do is change the "no" to "any", so this cancels out the double negative.

When we use it as a question, we would say: "Do you have any...?" For example:

"Do you have any money?"

No, you don't have any money. Okay.

Do you have any children? Do you have anything to give me? Okay?

So: "I can't get no", mm-mm. We have to say: "I can't get any satisfaction." Mick Jagger,

you better watch yourself, big lips, because Ronnie's coming to get ya. Don't be bad,

don't use double negatives, it ain't right.

It's not right. Good bye.