何も〜ない details
nothing + write + not
nani mo kakanai
nothing; not anything — 何 plus も under a negative predicate
meaning: not write anything
冷蔵庫、何も入ってないよ。買い物行こう。
reizouko, nani mo haittenai yo. kaimono ikou.
There's nothing in the fridge — let's go shopping. casual
朝からずっと忙しくて、まだ何も食べていません。
asa kara zutto isogashikute, mada nani mo tabete imasen.
I've been busy since morning and haven't eaten anything yet. neutral
- colloquial
Examples
nothing; not anything — 何 under a negative predicate denies every candidate at once, most often as the verb's object
冷蔵庫、何も入ってないよ。買い物行こう。
reizouko, nani mo haittenai yo. kaimono ikou.
There's nothing in the fridge — let's go shopping. casual
朝からずっと忙しくて、まだ何も食べていません。
asa kara zutto isogashikute, mada nani mo tabete imasen.
I've been busy since morning and haven't eaten anything yet. neutral
部屋には机が一つあるだけで、ほかには何もなかった。
heya ni wa tsukue ga hitotsu aru dake de, hoka ni wa nani mo nakatta.
There was just one desk in the room and nothing else. neutral
その件については、まだ何も伺っておりません。
sono ken ni tsuite wa, mada nani mo ukagatte orimasen.
I have not heard anything about that matter yet. formal
Formation
何も{V-nai}attaches to ない-form
Variant notes
- なんにも — the emphatic spoken form of the same phrase — なんにも聞いてないよ.
Notes
何にも使わない, 何とも言えない.
Related patterns
Similar
The same frame over a different question word, and they divide the world rather than compete — 何も ranges over things and 誰も over people, so 何も見えない reports a view with nothing in it where 誰も見えない reports one with nobody in it; neither takes the other's referent.
少しも denies the DEGREE of a predicate, so it scales any adjective (少しも痛くない); 何も denies an ARGUMENT, so it reaches an adjective only where that adjective has a thing to empty (何も悪くない) and never scales one — for a body part the question word is どこ rather than 何 (どこも痛くない, ×何も痛くない).
何も denies the things a verb acts on, どこにも the places it happens in, and the two stack in one clause (どこにも何も置いていない); where 何も needs the verb to have a thing to empty, どこにも needs it to have a location.
Lookalikes
Identical も before a negative, different host — 何もしない takes the question word 何 and denies every possible act, while 見もしない hangs も on one verb's masu-stem and denies that single expected act; a reader who parses 何もしない as the second reading loses the "at all" entirely.