Not many people are not fond of life.

Question

Hi,I'm very confused about the sentence like this: "Not many people are not fond of life."Is it "many people are fond of life".I wonder why they like using many negatives in a sentence which makes me difficult to understand. Please help me.

Marius Hancu · Accepted Answer

"Not many people are not fond of life."

means, in essence:
"Most of the people are fond of life, and only few aren't fond of it."

Ant_222 · Answer

Well, the meanings are slightly different. If you want to emphasize that it is a rare case that a person is not fond of life, you can use this double negation.

Also you can substitute "Not many" with "Few".

Nef · Answer

Minhuoc
Hi,

I'm very confused about the sentence like this: "Not many people are not fond of life."

Is it "many people are fond of life".

I wonder why they like using many negatives in a sentence which makes me difficult to understand.

Please help me.

This kind of sentence has what is called a double negative. (not, not)

It is a tricky kind of sentence because you need to think longer than usual to understand its meaning.

As people have said here, and as in math, two negatives can make a positive. If you removed both 'nots', you'd have

"Many people are fond of life."

Even though this is not the exact meaning of the original sentence, it is close.

Minhuoc · Answer

Thank you.

Now I find it interesting to use a double negative although it makes me a bit confused.

Thanks a lot.

Nef · Answer

It often confuses native English speakers, also! I think that is why it isn't used more.

Not many people are not fond of life.

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