For me, French is the language I like to be negative in. It's not a language I'm native-level fluent in, but I'm at the level where I can carry out those mental self-conversations you have with yourself when thinking in French as well.
In french, negating a statement involves two words sandwiched around the verb (usually ne...pas, e.g. "il ne trouve pas"). I think for me this gives the negation a lot more "weight". It's hard to explain (and I'm not even sure if this is the explanation, it's more of a guess). But if I'm thinking a strongly negative statement I'll often think it in French.
There aren't that many things for which this happens for me, most kinda of thoughts get expressed in no particular one of the languages for me. But most strong negatives happen in French (and certain kinds of questions happen in my non-English native language).
I wonder if it's just a coincidence or something special about negative statements going on here.
I should say to take my comments with a grain of salt - that's how I heard her English parts. I really have no idea if there were just as many negative comments in her Thai. Just a bit of curious anecdata, please salt well.
“Swallowed” isn’t the right way to describe it. That implies that in people’s heads they think they’re saying “ne” but they don’t because they’re speaking too fast, or whatever.
In reality, “pas” (without “ne”) is simply the unmarked, natural way of forming negation in spoken French. The extra “ne” is relatively uncommon (except in writing which is a whole different ball game) and normally signifies a slightly higher level of formality.
As an aside, “pas” was originally a noun meaning “step” (and still does have this meaning) – quite an odd etymology for a negative particle!
In spoken French it's definitely on its way out, effectively leaving only "pas" as a single negative particle. It's a good example of what is called the Jespersen's Cycle
For me, French is the language I like to be negative in. It's not a language I'm native-level fluent in, but I'm at the level where I can carry out those mental self-conversations you have with yourself when thinking in French as well.
In french, negating a statement involves two words sandwiched around the verb (usually ne...pas, e.g. "il ne trouve pas"). I think for me this gives the negation a lot more "weight". It's hard to explain (and I'm not even sure if this is the explanation, it's more of a guess). But if I'm thinking a strongly negative statement I'll often think it in French.
There aren't that many things for which this happens for me, most kinda of thoughts get expressed in no particular one of the languages for me. But most strong negatives happen in French (and certain kinds of questions happen in my non-English native language).
I wonder if it's just a coincidence or something special about negative statements going on here.