Niente, nada, nimic
The Spanish word nadaΒ (nothing) stems from a Latin word meaning 'born'. For example, no veo nadaΒ ('I don't see anything') comes from the construction nΕn videΕ rem nΔtam, literally 'I don't see a born thing'. The word rem ('thing'), in turn, is the ancestor of rien, the French word for 'nothing'.
The Latin pronouns for 'nothing' and 'no one', nihil and nemΕ, didn't do well in the Romance daughter languages: they were supplanted by all sorts of innovated pronouns used in twofold negations with non, ne, no etc. Today's infographic shows these pronouns and their origins in a selection of the Romance languages.
In French, you negate a sentence by adding ne ... pas, as in je ne fume pas ('I don't smoke'). Originally, the word pas only meant 'step'. How did it become part of the negation? I tell all about it on my Patreon (650 words).
