Nem látok semmit szemüveg nélkül

Why does Hungarian use double negatives?

A Hungarian negative sentence usually carries two negatives, and that is the correct form, not careless speech. Nem látok semmit is literally “I don’t see nothing.” The negative word has to agree with the verb’s nem: nincs senki (“there’s nobody”), soha nem megyek (“I never go”), sehol nem találom (“I can’t find it anywhere”).

The pattern covers every se- word — semmi (nothing), senki (nobody), sehol (nowhere), soha (never), semmilyen (no kind of) — and they stack without cancelling out: Soha senki nem mondott semmit, “Nobody ever said anything.” Dropping the nem is the classic English-speaker mistake; látok semmit is not a sentence in Hungarian at all.