People and question words

The twenty-sixth entry is ninguém, and its example sentence breaks a rule English teaches on the first day. Não está aqui ninguém carries two negatives, não and ninguém, and it means precisely what either one alone would mean: there is nobody here. Portuguese does not add negatives up. When the negative word comes after the verb, the verb still has to carry não in front of it — não quero nada, não há nenhum problema, não vejo ninguém. Move that same word in front of the verb and the não vanishes, because the job is already done: ninguém sabe, nada mudou. English went the other way and let the second negative cancel the first, so « I do not see nobody » is either a mistake or a claim that somebody is there, and the word that belongs after a negative verb is « anybody » instead. The habit to break is not remembering to put não in, which becomes automatic within a week; it is resisting the urge to take it out again once ninguém has arrived and the sentence already sounds complete.