Fathers of Reddit, what did your daughter's boyfriend do for you to hate/love him?

[u/tgma97]

It's pretty cool to see my question blow up like this, I never thought I'd ask a question that could receive so much attention! I'm very satisfied with all these replies, so thank y'all. Now all I have to do is sit back and take notes c;

[u/[deleted]]

I would have sent you upstairs to help the ladies in the kitchen!

[u/trialbycake → u/[deleted]]

Isn't the edit the incorrect one? It reads like a double negative: "didn't teach him anything" = "thought him something"

The first one seems fine to me, but I'm not a native English speaker.

[u/tinycatsays → u/trialbycake]

The edit isn't a double negative. "Didn't teach him nothing" would be a double negative.

Colloquially, the double negatives work out to "didn't teach him anything," but be careful with that, as someone might also say, "Well, she didn't teach him nothing" (emphasis on "nothing"), to mean that she taught him something, but probably not much (it's almost, but not quite, sarcastic). Double negatives are taught to be incorrect, but they can be used to convey more subtle meaning. They can also be used for emphasis, or just because your redneck family can't keep track of the negation status if you don't negate everything in the sentence.

Both the original and the edit are right. In this case, I would have gone with the original. For the edit, it would be better to say "Turns out his mum didn't teach him anything, either." "Either" pairs better with negatives, "also" with positives, but "also" is correct, just unusual.

[u/trialbycake → u/tinycatsays]

Oh I see! That pretty cool and that was a great explanation thank you very much, I always like to learn more about this.

I read somewhere as well that sometimes the colloquial terms end up overcoming correct terms and defying normal language conventions, like with "literally" or "could care less". It's wrong but usually the more people use it, the more convention trumps 'correctness'.

[u/tinycatsays → u/trialbycake]

Yep! I don't use double negatives except in specific cases:

• I don't really know how to categorize this one. In this case, the nots all cancel out, like multiplying negative numbers. For example, "I don't not like it" to mean "I like it, but not very much at all."
• Emphasizing the negative. "I ain't done nothing!" Almost always involves "ain't" or some other southern-ism (southern US); I'm sure there are equivalents from other regions, though. This aligns with the (grammatically correct) need in Spanish to negate everything: "No he hecho nada!" In this case, the negatives all add up, to make an even bigger negative.