Double negative resolved to a positive in the English language?

Answer 1

Under the influence of prejudice, ignorance and folly, schoolmasters attempted to reform English in the image of Latin. Thus it was decreed that the age-old English reinforcing doubled negative, as in not nobody, not no how was "wrong." They cancel out, said the stoop-shouldered nerds. But of course it is in Latin that they cancel out, not in English. In English they reinforce each other. Ancient Greek was like that too, you could put a string of negatives together and no one would ever try to unravel 'em to see if it came out as compliment or not.

Sadly the schoolmasters prevailed in many ways. In written English, double negatives are as in Latin, and not nobody is a precious way of saying " lotsa folks." Under their crabby mis-guidance, written English lost a lot of its punch. Ending a sentence with a preposition became something up with which we no longer may put. Even our colloquial speech has been infected with schoolmaster propriety: most of us use the barbarously absurd "aren't I?" instead of the natural English "ain't I."