# כלום לא עוזר



## Ali Smith

Shalom, does כלום לא עוזר mean “It’s useless”? If it does, what’s the point of לא?

Thanks.


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## Drink

Ali Smith said:


> Shalom, does כלום לא עוזר mean “It’s useless”? If it does, what’s the point of לא?
> 
> Thanks.



Literally it means "Nothing helps" or "Nothing is helping". But the word כלום, much like the word "anything" in English, requires another negation, the difference is "anything" can't really be used that way as the subject of a sentence in English.

So you can compare, just like you need the לא in הוא לא צריך כלום "he doesn't need anything", you also need the לא in "כלום לא עוזר".


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## elroy

That’s not how I would explain it.

כלום means "nothing."  In this case, Hebrew, like many other languages other than English, requires a _syntactic_ double negative that does not express double negation _semantically_:

Spanish: No ayuda nada.
Polish: Nic nie pomaga.
etc.

(I'm pretty sure Russian does the same thing, doesn't it, Drink?)


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## slus

כלום is a strange word. Drink's explanation is more correct, because the original meaning of כלום, as he said, is "anything" or "something".
In modern colloquial Hebrew, we say כלום when we mean "nothing", but what we really should say is "לא כלום". 
Double negative exists, but not in this case.


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## elroy

My explanation applies from a _synchronic_ perspective.


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## Abaye

Hebrew כלום, like שום דבר, mean originally "something" and not "nothing". So they require a negation word to become "nothing". Apparently they almost always appear in this negated context so for modern Hebrew speakers the negation is implied.

You still can ask כלום אכלת מהעוגה "did you eat some cake" or על שום מה עשית זאת "why did you do it" but wouldn't hear it often in modern Hebrew.

כלום ושום דבר - האקדמיה ללשון העברית


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## Ali Smith

Thank you, everybody!
Where would you use כלום לא עוזר? I mean, in what context?


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## Drink

elroy said:


> That’s not how I would explain it.
> ...
> (I'm pretty sure Russian does the same thing, doesn't it, Drink?)



Yes, that's how it works in Russian, but the way I explained it is how to make it make the most sense for an English speaker. It just so happens that English has a good parallel to double negation with the word "anything". The only difference is hasn't gone the extra step of becoming the primary word for "nothing", because if it had it would have to be able to be used as the subject and would have to be able to be used on its own.


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## Techref

Ali Smith said:


> Thank you, everybody!
> Where would you use כלום לא עוזר? I mean, in what context?



you take sleeping pills, but stayed awake the entire night.
you then go to the doc and said to him,

לקחתי כדורי שינה אבל כלום לא עוזר


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