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I was chatting with a friend when he said 'I don't get no money' - he was referring to some work he was doing. This usage of language confused me. I have come across phrases like this in movies and books too, but never quite understood it. How is 'I don't get no money' equivalent to 'I don't get any money'. I'm sorry if my question is phrased incorrectly. I'm not sure what tags to use either so edits would be appreciated.

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    Welcome to ELU, venkat. Please go through the previous posts. There's a wealth of information in here and more than one instance of this in the previous questions already answered. – Kris Jun 09 '14 at 05:37
  • It's non-standard (for 'I don't get any money' as you guess). If your friend's use of the expression surprised you, he was probably using it deliberately quirkily. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 09 '14 at 06:04
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    It's a double negative. Rather than interpreting it literally, you should read the two negatives in the same sentence as reinforcing each other. – Simon B Jun 09 '14 at 07:39
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    It's what's called Negative Concord, a situation in which extra negatives reinforce earlier ones, as @SimonBarker points out. This is the norm in languages like Spanish (No tengo nada, 'I don't have anything', literally 'I don't have nothing'). Negative concord negatives don't cancel out like logical negatives sometimes do. English uses Negative Polarity items like anything, instead of another negative. – John Lawler Jun 09 '14 at 12:50

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