'nulla' vs 'qualcosa'

Question

Nessuna legge elettorale, scritta affinché nessuno perda, porterà nulla di buono.

Nessuna legge elettorale, scritta affinché nessuno perda, porterà qualcosa di buono.

According to you, should I use nulla or qualcosa in those sentences?

Or both are useable, but with a different meaning?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 26 '14 at 10:00

2

Be careful to the double negation nessuna - nulla, you have to choose one :

"Nessuna legge elettorale, scritta affinché nessuno perda, porterà qualcosa di buono"

"Qualsiasi legge elettorale, scritta affinché nessuno perda, non porterà nulla di buono"

Actually to me "non potrà portare" sounds more natural, but there is a slight stylistic change.

answered Feb 26 '14 at 10:00

laika

774
3
11

Double negation is not a problem in Italian in general. – badp Feb 26 '14 at 22:45
Probably double negation is not the correct term. I agree that the double negative words in "Nessuno ha fatto nulla" are ok, but "nessuno ha fatto nulla di buono" sounds strange. – laika Feb 27 '14 at 08:32
@badp Double negation is used with negative sense in Italian, but one has to be careful about possible ambiguities. So non ho fatto niente is good, nessuno ha fatto niente is already ambiguous. – egreg Feb 28 '14 at 11:32

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 15 '14 at 08:48

2

Here you can read that if you write a double negative you'll give the impression of a stronger negation ('in italiano la doppia negazione rafforza il "no"'), so they're both usable and with the same meaning, but the first one sounds "more negative".

answered Mar 15 '14 at 08:48

Mad Hatter

351
1
4

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 12 '14 at 14:02

The second one is the most correct between the two.

Anyhow, I would elaborate it a bit more. Do you mean it will not "lead" or it will not "bring" to something good?

If you mean it will not lead to something good it's "porterà a qualcosa di buono". Otherwise the second, as you wrote.

Barzi2001 · Answer 4 · 2014-03-13T09:25:17.573

0

Try to read the sentence without the part in the middle, i.e.,

Nessuna legge elettorale porterà nulla di buono.

Nessuna legge elettorale porterà qualcosa di buono.

Read in that way, the second one looks more correct. An English translation in the sense of "meaning" (i.e. not a "word-by-word" translation) would be

There is no election law that will bring nothing good.

There is no election law that will bring something good.

while, as Walter Tross suggested, there is a third opportunity which is

Nessuna legge elettorale porterà alcunché di buono.

which is also translated as

There is no election law that will bring anything good.

edited Mar 13 '14 at 09:25

answered Mar 13 '14 at 07:32

Barzi2001

101
2

Please note that the comparison with English doesn't actually work. Italian uses double negation as a correct grammatical form, while in the English grammar negation such as "no ... nothing..." is considered a mistake. – I.M. Mar 13 '14 at 09:16
I agree that a double negation is correct in Italian but not in English. In that case I think that the double negation "cancels" and the meaning of the sentence is the same as if you erase both the negation. To me, "NESSUNA legge elettorare (which means there is NO election law) -> porterá NULLA di buono (which means that set of good things bring is empty)" is equivalent to say that "QUALSIASI legge elettorale porterá QUALCOSA di buono". Nevertheless, in the everyday spoken language, everybody gets that whatever election law you setup it will never bring something good with the 1st sentence. – Barzi2001 Mar 13 '14 at 09:35

'nulla' vs 'qualcosa'

4 Answers4