Anything means NADA?

Anything does not mean NADA. It never has. The real meaning of anything is ALGO just like Somehing (which explains why they are synonyms). The fact that anything is used in negative sentences does not mean is a negative word. It is just a word used in negative sentences but its meaning remains untouched. In other words, when you say "I don't have anything...! You are really saying YO NO TENGO ALGO and not YO NO TENGO NADA.  Does it make sense? Of course it does. This way the expression in English is not redundant. We know that Redundancy is the presentations of some idea offering more information than it's really necessary. In Spanish we have several cases of redundancy that are allowed and commonly accepted. Here are some:

NO HAY NADIE
NO SÉ NADA
NO PUEDO VER NADA
Really this all comes from the fact that whether we like it or not we are more different than similar and we say and do things differently because our cultures are different. And that's precisely the beauty of it all. If we were all the same we would be so redundant.

Comments

Carlos said…
Something that I like about English is the fact that I don't need to be careful of redundancy, the wrong use of the word anything is common, pitifully I used to do it.
July 22, 2012 at 7:23 PM
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