1. ぜんぜん飲みません
1. Here ぜんぜん is “never” and “ません” can be “don’t/wont’t” so the sentence should be “I (don’t/won’t) never drink.”
2. コーヒーをあまり飲みません
1. Here “あまり” is “not often” and “ません” can be “don’t/wont’t” so the sentence should be “I (don’t/won’t) not often drink coffee.”
Is it the case that with negative adverbs the negative effect of “ません” is cancelled?
6 comments
What about using よく for often?
“全然” isn’t so much a negative adverb as an adverb that, traditionally could only be used in a negative sentence, but nowadays it occurs in positive sentences too. “全然違う。” would mean “It’s totally different.” so this shows it’s not negative on it’s own.
So no, it does not cancel anything because there is no double negative here. “全然” doesn’t mean “never” in a positive sentence. “全然飲みます。” itself doesn’t really mean much though and it’s use in positive sentences is fairly restricted but “全然いい。” can be used as well to mean “It’s totally fine.” for instance.
Also, “全然飲みません。” more so means “I don’t drink at all.” than “I never drink.”. It doesn’t so much mean “never” as “at all”, or “completely”. In fact it’s quite similar to “at all” in English which also only occurs in negative sentences though it itself is not negative.
“あまり” doesn’t occur in positive sentences as far as I know
For 1:
The verb/copula/adjective is what counts in japanese.
ぜんぜん here is a hyperbole and means all or completely. So the sentence is all drinking-masen (all is not drinking).
For 2:
あまり means not much and 飲みません mean not drinking. So あまり飲みません means not much not-drinking = a little drinking. So the sentence is like: coffee-wo not-much not-drink ~= coffee-wo drink-a-little or coffee-wo not-much-drinking.
I tried to make literal but butchered grammar in english to show the logic of the sentences. I hope this helps
If we wanted to translate to english, then 全然 means ‘completely’, and あまり means ‘too much’.
I don’t drink completely.
I don’t drink too much.
They’re adverbs that are used often in negative sentences, but they’re not entirely negatives themselves.
Ah, so that is not really a double negative. Think of ぜんぜん and あまり as intensifying adverbs that only works with negative predicates. There are lots of other adverbs in Japanaese that can pretty much only be used with negative predicates but do not actually “flip” its meaning (e.g. ちっとも, 決して, etc.)
Don’t try to inject english grammar/sense into a different language, it’s not “should be” but rather “shouldn’t it be”?