Did you watch our video about Spanish negation? In it, Marta explains that to make a negative sentence in Spanish, you basically need to place the word no before the verb in any given sentence, like this one from our animated friend Guillermina:

By combining the word no with the word ni (nor) you can negate more than one idea:

As in English, you can use ni (nor) as many times as you want:

There are some other negative words in Spanish: nada (nothing), nadie (nobody), jamás (never), nunca (never), and tampoco (neither). How are these negative words used in Spanish? You place them right before the verb:

You can also combine these words with the word no. In this case you should use no before the verb and the additional negative after it:

As you can see, this leads us to probably the most interesting thing about negation in Spanish: the fact that double and triple negatives are very common:

No me gusta deberle nada a nadie.

I don't like to owe anything to anyone.

Caption 12, El Ausente Acto 2 - Part 5

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Notice how in the previous quote the English translation uses the negative “don’t” first, and then the affirmative “anything” and “anyone” instead of “nothing” and “nobody” (which are the literal equivalent to nada and nadie). This is so because formal written English doesn’t use double negation. By contrast, the general rule in Spanish is not to mix negative and affirmative words in the same sentence. See for example:

Yo no pido nada más

I don't ask for anything else

Caption 14, Enrique Iglesias Alguien soy yo

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Where Spanish uses two consecutive negatives (no and nada), English uses one negative (don't) and one affirmative (anything). Saying "Yo no pido algo más" or "Yo pido nada más" in Spanish is similar to saying “I don’t ask for nothing else” in English.

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From the lyrics of Belinda's "Bella Traición" ("Beautiful Betrayal"), you might detect bitterness:

Lo siento si agoté la ilusión

I'm sorry if I ran out of hope

Caption 12, Belinda - Bella Traición

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The verb agotar means "to exhaust; to use up; to run out of." It's helpful to remember that the noun gota means "drop" as in "a drop of water," (una gota de agua). The verb agotar stems from squeezing out every drop of something.

Now, you might ask why we didn't translate ilusión as its seemingly simply English cognate "illusion." After all, we might translate ilusión óptica as "optical illusion" and falsas ilusiones as "false illusions." But the Spanish ilusión has meanings you don't find in its English sound-alike. Check out these examples:

No te hagas ilusiones.
Don't get your hopes up.

Su ilusión desde pequeña era ser actriz en Broadway.
Her dream since she was little was to be an actress on Broadway.

Cuando pierdes la ilusión...
When you lose heart...

All of these examples employ "ilusión" as a synonym closer to "esperanza; sueño" or "hope; dream" in English. That's what we thought Belinda's lyrics were aiming to convey. Listen in to the song's refrain:

Porque sin ti no hay presente ni futuro, sálvame

Because without you there's no present nor future, save me

de esta bella traición que mató mi ilusión

from this beautiful betrayal that killed my hope

Captions 9-10, Belinda - Bella Traición

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Now, before we move on we must note that ilusión has a third meaning: "excitement; thrill," as in these expressions:

Eh... con esa ilusión que a mí particularmente me hacía ver, eh...

Um... with that excitement that it particularly made me see, um...

Caption 9, Estudiantes de baile flamenco - Araceli

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¡Qué ilusión!
How exciting!

Me hace mucha ilusión.
I'm really looking forward to it; I'm thrilled.