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In an English subtitle translated from other language, I saw such a sentence:

I haven't not thought about that a little.

What the speaker actually meant was 'I have thought about that.'(Can I use an emphatic 'do' between 'I' and 'have'?)

I know that double negatives produce an affirmative. Yet I have never seen any sentence like this before, which seems weird and grammatically wrong to me. Would a native speaker ever say 'haven't not done sth'?

Michael
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1 Answers1

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I don't think so except some weird context like

'Have you thought about it?'

and then

'Well...I haven't not thought about it.'

I can imagine there could be some kind of context for this, but it's rare.

Of course, people do say like 'I haven't thought of nothing.'

Anyway, I suspect that subtitle just erred in repeating the 'not'. Or maybe you provide the context?

BCLC
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    People often say 'I haven't/didn't/won't/don't (etc) not done something', at least in British English, when they want to emphasise the absence of a deliberate omission or failure to do something. Emphasis in speech on the 'not'. Not really 'weird'. For example: Person A: I understand you're not speaking to Mary. Person B: I'm not not speaking to her, I've just been too busy to call her'. – Michael Harvey Aug 14 '22 at 10:10
  • @MichaelHarvey It's kind of hard for me to comprehend 'to emphasise the absence of a deliberate omission or failure to do something'. Not so sure about what that means. – Michael Aug 14 '22 at 11:46
  • @MichaelHarvey You mean it's actually an negative, so it means 'I haven't thought about that'? The point is, the 'not do sth' is not deliberate? I may misunderstand the dialogue. – Michael Aug 14 '22 at 11:47
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    Michael H's Person B is not deliberately avoiding speaking to Mary, it just happens that they haven't spoken to her. In your sentence, it's the addition of 'a little' that makes it sound really weird. – Kate Bunting Aug 14 '22 at 13:05
  • @KateBunting Maybe it means 'not that I haven't thought even a little/the least about that'? – Michael Aug 14 '22 at 13:19