oneofbilllions

[quiet pawn]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

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[cerulean spear]

toutes les personnes ne savent pas la réponse → all the people do not know the answer

is that what you really meant to say?

or are you trying to say "not all people know the answer"?

[west rapids]

In the end, they both mean the same if you think about the logic

I was just wondering what would be more natural in French

Because I've seen it used like this

[cerulean spear]

Well, they don't mean the same thing

there's a nuance between the two, that's why I'm asking

because depending on which you mean, it will be worded differently

[west rapids]

All the people do not know the answer - this implies that only some of them, not all
Not all the people know the answer - only some, not all
Isn't it this?

[cerulean spear]

"All the people do not know the answer" woudl be fundamentally the same as "nobody knows the answer"

[west rapids]

Oh, then it must be because my example was bad

But for example in this

[west rapids]

.

Why aren't they saying "pas tout le monde est parfait"?

I was wondering if there's something about the "tout le monde ne ...pas ..." construction that is more natural in French

[cerulean spear]

tout le monde n'est pas parfait -> everyone is imperfect

[west rapids]

But then I heard people say it like "tout le monde n'est pas..." As well

[cerulean spear]

in any case, this is an area that gets complicated and French isn't as supple as English when it comes to some of these types of constructions

so you could say something like "ce n'est pas tout le monde qui est parfait"

not everyone is perfect

but it's a mouthful

oh, and also, for "know the answer" strictly speaking it's better to say "connaitre la réponse" not "savoir"

[west rapids]

At first I wanted to say something that was less philosophical than this, like
"Not everyone brought their dog on the trip"
Then I remembered I saw that construction using " tout le monde ne ... Pas..."
So I was confused about whether I should say
"Tout le monde n'a pas amené son chien"
Or
"Pas tout le monde a amené son chien"

So should I say "ce n'est pas tout le monde qui a amené son chien"?

[west rapids]

Right, it's followed by a noun🤦‍♀️

[cerulean spear]

"tout le monde n'a pas X" is logically the same as "personne n'a X"

if everyone DIDN'T do something, then no one did it

French doesn't just have "not everyone" like English, so if you want that sort of wording you need to change it to something like what I said above "ce n'est pas tout le monde qui..." but, again, it's a mouthful

generally speaking, we'd probably tend to just word it differently in French
"certains n'ont pas amené leur chien"

as I think about it "tout le monde n'a pas amené son chien" is somewhat ambiguous, so you might mean "not everyone brougth their dog"... but because it's ambiguous, it's better to find another way to word it

[west rapids]

When you say "everyone didn't do something" isn't it more like... some of them did do it, others didn't
Like you're saying it isn't true for everyone, but it is true for some of them
So it's not exactly the same as "nobody did it". Because some did do it 🧐

[cerulean spear]

it's ambiguous as I've just said

"everyone at ice cream" = "100% of people at ice cream"
"everyone didn't eat ice cream" = could be "100% of people didn't eat ice cream" or "less than 100% of people at ice cream"

[west rapids]

YES

[unkempt patio]

"everyone didn't eat ice cream" doesn't sound incredibly natural to me, strictly speaking I would understand this as "no one ate ice cream"
The second meaning I would surely be able to grab from context but would feel like they're misspeaking to me

The first meaning still feels oddly worded but wouldn't feel "wrong" just not idiomatic I guess

It feels like French is more flexible/ambiguous here to me even if English is more permissive? If that makes any sense

[valid dagger]

my partner and i were discussing this using a Tolkien poem as an example -

All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost

The first line could be taken to mean that nothing gold glitters, or that there exists some gold stuff that doesn't glitter.

The ambiguity of "set negation" in English has been legitimately frustrating for me at times when trying to communicate lol, I especially contrast it to a programming language where this kind of thing is very explicit - "for each thing that is gold, that thing does not glitter" / "for each thing that is gold, that thing may or may not glitter" / "the set of all things gold includes at least one element that does not glitter"

[cerulean spear]

I can't prove it, but I imagine that this is an aspect of all human languages

[valid dagger]

why do you think that?

im inclined to agree, just curious about your reasoning

[cerulean spear]

because our brains aren't set up like machines when it comes to logic

[valid dagger]

ye

I think to be 100% unambiguous in English you have to break the set down into items like I did above (or invert the statement to get rid of the negation) and that kind of "iteration"/"itemization" doesn't feel particularly native to human thought, to me. Afaik there's no word order that fixes it

or you can be unambiguous in only one of the two cases

[terse summit]

The first one is more natural

But ambiguous

The second one is common but informal

I haven't read everything here but yes languages will be ambiguous sometimes

Context is part of communication