"I don't put no salad dressing in my salad"

[Bright_Star]

So I was talking to a lady on the bus & the conversation turned to food. I mentioned that I eat salad & that "I don't put no salad dressing in my salad". Yeah, just like that. So she looked at me for a few seconds & burst out laughing. I said "What?" She said.."Don't you mean that you don't put any salad dressing in your salad?" So then I said..."Yeah, I don't put no salad dressing in my salad."

She kept laughing & the other lady I was sitting beside, said that she knows I'm Puerto Rican & that's the way we talk. Something to do with sentence structure in spanish & all that.

I guess I talk a little funny but I've talked like that all my life. Anybody else?

She made me feel uncomfortable laughing at me the way she did.

[MaggieTheCat]

I believe that the way you say it is actually what's called a double negative. If you said, "I don't put salad dressing on my salad" or "I put no salad dressing on my salad" it would mean that you eat your salad without salad dressing. However, to say BOTH "don't" and "no" (which are both negatives) makes it a double negative...which technically means that you do eat salad with salad dressing. By not putting no salad dressing on the salad, it means that you ARE putting salad dressing on the salad.

Here's another example if a double negative: "I don't want no beans in my chili." You DON'T want NO BEANS in your chili, which means you DO want beans in your chili. If you actually don't want beans in your chili...then just say that. "I don't want beans in my chili."

I know that was really confusing...Maybe someone who's an English major can explain it better than I can?

[blas]

Everyone here talks like that.

"I don't want no damn taters with my steak!"

"I didn't put no damn ranch on those carrots!"

"I ain't got none of those potatoes!"

[Pedersen]

Don't let it bother you that much. Here's why:

As a native English speaker, you have used a double negative, which is usually frowned upon. Saying it in the way you did makes you sound uneducated (yes, I have a point, bear with me).

You, as a native Spanish speaker, would find the following sentence to be wrong, though it is what I would come up with when trying to convey the same meaning: "Yo no pongo aderezo en mi ensalada" (sorry for the lack of accents, I never have learned how to make them on this keyboard). I might even go with "no pongo nada de aderezo en mi ensalada".

I don't know how I got it wrong, I only know that I did. I managed to convey my meaning, but someone who speaks Spanish natively would probably view my speech as uneducated, possibly child-like, etc. It might even make that person laugh. I need much more practice before I can get to true proficiency.

Am I excusing her having laughed? No, not at all. I am trying to explain what might have happened, and why viewing it from the opposite angle could help to explain it to you.

I hope it can help reduce the sting a little bit, anyway.

[r2cagle]

You did a good job explaining, Maggie.

Don't most of the romance languages (spanish, italian, etc) actually use the double negative or it translates to english as a double negative? Someone correct me, it's been a while since high school.

Regardless, it wasn't nice to laugh endlessly and make fun of the way someone talks or pronounces things. I may have laughed at first, because it was unexpected, but then explained why it was funny, not keep laughing and make you feel bad. That is unacceptable behavior.

[AdminAssistant]

Don't most of the romance languages (spanish, italian, etc) actually use the double negative or it translates to english as a double negative? Someone correct me, it's been a while since high school.

French uses a two part negative - "ne....pas". For example, "Je ne parle pas francais" ("I do not speak French.") or "Je ne veux pas assaisonnement a ma salade." ("I don't want salad dressing on my salad.")

Like protege, apologies for no accents, and I realize that last sentence is probably not the best way to phrase that.

[Evil Queen]

*ahem*

Don' wurry, hun, we all tolk like that back where Ima from.



It's southern culture on the skids; best referred to as bad grammar. Don't worry, a lot of us talk that way. It's just easier to blame our parents for the way we articulate than it is to change it.

A lot of the time, anyways. I just learned that I've been saying "admittedly" wrong for years! I've always said "admittingly". The yankee scum I'm dating (DataJager, it's a huge joke that he's a yankee since he's.... technically.... not...) has since corrected me.

[Jester]

I know that was really confusing...Maybe someone who's an English major can explain it better than I can?

Actually, you explained it really, really well. And I pride myself on my grammatical knowledge and abilities.

That being said, this seems like the place to make the following statements:


I don't want no more beer!

I don't want no hot women to hook up with!

I don't want no winning lottery tickets!

And I don't want no tasty seafood for dinner!

[Aethian]

I don't want no more beer!

I don't want no hot women to hook up with!

I don't want no winning lottery tickets!

And I don't want no tasty seafood for dinner!

So basically a hot woman with a tray holding a tasty seafood dinner, a lotto ticket in her teeth and a couple cold ones in her other hand? Is that all it takes to make our resident bartender all nice and happy?



As for the woman I am slightly ashamed to say I have laughed at weird sentence structures before. I apologize as fast as I can for laughing but there have been times I need to wait for the other person to cool down before explaining why I laughed. It's not cool and I know that but there are going to be weird sentence structures out there. Please don't get offended by those of us who have leaking brain filters.

[protege]

Like protege, apologies for no accents, and I realize that last sentence is probably not the best way to phrase that.

Actually, Protege has a slight Pittsburgh accent

[AdminAssistant]

Actually, Protege has a slight Pittsburgh accent

Whoops! I meant Pedersen - that's what I get for not bothering to double check and relying on my rusty memory.

[Jester]

So basically a hot woman with a tray holding a tasty seafood dinner, a lotto ticket in her teeth and a couple cold ones in her other hand? Is that all it takes to make our resident bartender all nice and happy?

No, that would not make me nice and happy. It would make me thrilled.

Ecstatic would be if she were in a skimpy bikini.

[Magpie]

Ecstatic would be if she were in a skimpy bikini.

And what's the description if she's out of the skimpy bikini?

[TelephoneAngel]

I had a friend who did this -

Not making fun of the lady concerned, she was very nice but she also struggled with negatives and sometimes made them triple negatives, which made her friends laugh, she would say things like

"but she might not don't not want to go there!"

I think her background was a Spanish variant language as well.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I would far rather use bad grammar in public than use bad manners.

I'd say it wasn't you that came away from that encounter looking bad.