You can't claim you're not surprised? So you can claim you are surprised? You're surprised by this. I feel like I'm trying to understand double negatation logic in code haha
In English, there is a sentence structure like ‘I ain’t telling nobody’, which means ‘I won’t tell anyone’, but for me it’s difficult to decipher as well. Why it’s not like ‘I’m telling nobody’ or ‘I’m not telling anyone’? Why the double negative — ain’t and nobody — means negative as well.
Same issue is here. I don’t understand whether they were surprised or not. I assume they are not surprised. But the difficulty of the phrasing makes me wonder the meaning behind it.
I think that's saying they're surprised. The saying in other contexts: "I can't say I'm not impressed" -> I'm impressed. "I can't say you didn't try" -> you tried.
I think you mean "I can't say I'm surprised" -> this is not at all surprising. But that's just one negative.
That's a common enough error that it's become well-known slang. People are used to it and can figure out the intended meaning by intonation and context. Although it's still one of those things that can confuse folks who aren't fluent in English.
"I can't say I'm surprised" or
"I'm not surprised"
would be much clearer here if the intention is to say this is NOT surprising. "I can't say I'm not surprised" is confusing enough that the intention is not clear. Logically it implies surprise.
That's an ironic mistake playing with the idea of negation being additive instead of multiplicative that is enabled by the subtle redundancy encoded in no/any/some.
Makes me wonder if it might be a linguistic eddy echoing from the clash of Germanic and Latin-based French, where negation contracted with the word is also very common (no idea if n'est and friends had been a thing in French at the time that clash happened)
