I once looked over my kids’ shoulders to see a Jimmy Neutron episode where his buddy said to the teacher something like, “Could I not never be unexcused from not taking this test?” And the teacher was baffled so the kid got off the hook.
I was trying to find a video clip of this to illustrate double negatives. I found a lot Jimmy Neutron clips but not this. Anyone know anything that could help me narrow it down?
Despite what some grammarians say, english is not math. Two negatives do not cancel each other out, in fact a double negative usually is meant to emphasize the negative.
Mind you, that sentence is confusing.
But I would simply answer- “You may not be excused.” Nothing requires you to be held to a yes/no answer.
This episode https://jimmyneutron.fandom.com/wiki/Sheen's_Brain/Transcript ?
“Miss Fowl? Can I never ever not be dis-excused sometimes?”
Something like, “I don’t have none” doesn’t mathematically reduce to, “I have some” but it is non-standard English and widely considered to be an error.
None of which helps me find the clip…
That’s the one. Thank you!
Glad to help - good luck finding the clip
My favorite example is from the Family Ties theme song: “There ain’t no nothing we can’t love each other through”. It’s a quadruple negative, and it simplifies to the positive “We can love each other through anything”, but it doesn’t get there by the four negatives multiplying: Instead, the first three negatives are additive, producing an emphatic negative, which the fourth then reverses.
As shown in the linked transcript, it’s apparently two questions that only used double negatives, both of which fooled the teacher, along with the one you remember, which is a triple/quadruple negative (depending on how you count the word “sometimes”), to which the teacher does as @DrDeth says and avoids answering the question with yes or no. So I hope the answer wasn’t important.
Anyways, I found the clip in a best scenes compilation for Carl:
Go back a few seconds earlier to hear Jimmy’s double negative. Unfortunately, Sheen’s original question isn’t in the clip.