The question was"You don't want to talk to me anymore?" And the answer was" Never not talk to you" I am puzzled because if I translate in my language it does mean that "we will never talk again" Can you help ?
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1Look up "double negative" as used in English.– pboss3010Mar 9, 2020 at 12:48
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What is your own native language - presumably it has different word-ordering rules to those of English?– MikeBMar 9, 2020 at 13:45
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My language is Romanian.So in translation it is that " never going to talk each other" and it doesn't sound like English at all to me the sentence"Never not talk to you" That way I add my question,then the answer to see the content of the sentence.– TinaMar 9, 2020 at 17:43
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What was the context of this item - it sounds very 'street' to me, rather than formal/written English.– MikeBMar 10, 2020 at 11:30
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1 Answer
The answer seems to be a fragment of a longer sentence.
"Never not talk to you" would normally mean something along the lines of "there will never be a time when I won't be talking to you" or "I will always talk to you".
If there is no context or extra information missing from the answer this is a strange thing to say and would be a little unclear and would sound strange to the listener. There may be very specific cases where this is appropriate but usually it would be better to change the sentence to avoid the double negative ("never not")
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The question was" You don't talk to me anymore?" Which the answer was "Never not talk to you" and that was the end of conversation.And it is very unclear.– TinaMar 9, 2020 at 13:10
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@Tina "Never not talk to you" is only one word away from being perfectly normal usage - "I'd never not talk to you" so sounds like perfectly normal usage "on the street" as part of spoken English, so it is quite clear to me, if a fraction terse.– MikeBMar 9, 2020 at 13:43
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In that case, the sentence doesn't make very much sense. Double negatives can be ambiguous and can often rely on which words are stressed when saying it. "Never not" would usually be understood to mean "at no time will it no be happening". E.g. "Never not swimming" would be roughly synonymous with "Always swimming" unless the context suggests otherwise so I would say this would be the appropriate interpretation of the sentence in your question Mar 9, 2020 at 13:46
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@ededededed87 Yes the sentence doesn't make very much sense. No matter how much I try to put each word in order to translate,it doesn't translate as "never not talk to you"– TinaMar 9, 2020 at 17:54