Tag Archives: pleonastic non in Italian
When is a non not a not? Posted by Geoff on Sep 26, 2017
The Italian word non means ‘not’, right … beh, non sempre! (well not always!) The pleonastic non is a rather sneaky little character who likes to hang around in otherwise straightforward sentences with the sole purpose of confusing hapless students of Italian. Well dear readers, fear not, for we know his dirty little tricks and…
Italian False Negatives Posted by Geoff on Sep 14, 2016
One of the questions that we are most frequently asked by readers is: ‘why oh why is there a non in the expression finché non or fino a quando non (meaning: until)?’ Ah, the dreaded pleonastic non, enemy of every student of Italian! Well, this is one of those cases in which you just have to…