Nor am I a bit surprised
English translation: and I\'m not at all surprised
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| 13:34 Dec 17, 2010 |
| English language (monolingual) [Non-PRO] Social Sciences - General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters | |||||||
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|  Selected response from: Tony M France Local time: 08:10 | ||||||
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| SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED | ||||
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| 5 +1 | and I'm not at all surprised (you want to know...) |
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| 4 | I am not the least/en a little surprised, either. |
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| 4 | I am not surprised at all either |
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Answers
21 mins confidence: 
| nor am i a bit surprised I am not the least/en a little surprised, either. Explanation: Hope this helps. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 53 mins (2010-12-17 14:28:02 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- this is, of course, to read... I am not the least/not even a little surprised, either. |
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1 hr confidence:
| nor am i a bit surprised I am not surprised at all either Explanation: This should be a follow-on from some other negative statement (Neither .... nor is the full structure), although I can't see it in the text you include. If you say you are not a bit surprised, the opposite is not actually true (in other words, it doesn't mean that you are more than a bit surprised, for example!) In fact the meaning is that he is not surprised at all, as Thayenga says, not even a bit. The English use the litotes as a structure (stating the opposite with a negative, "I am not unhappy with his progress"), but this is not the case here. |
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Notes to answerer
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9 hrs confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
peer agreement (net): +1| nor am I a bit surprised and I'm not at all surprised (you want to know...) Explanation: If this follows immediately on as you've indicated, then I can perfectly understand the idiom here, it's common enough in idiomatic English speech. The first person says (apparently rather emphatcially!) that they want to know what is going on, and the British speaker comes back with "nor am I a bit surprised" — "it's not surprising that you'd like to know what's going on" The 'nor' doesn't have its usual meaning here, hence why there is no pairing with 'neither', nor is there any other preceding negative. Compare with the following example, which is not quite the same, but an equally common construction: "I don't intend to let the boss bully me!" "Nor should you" In this case, one could argue that the first remark contains a negative — but it isn't really that from which the 'nor' follows on. I don't know how to explain it in official grammatical terms, but I think of it as being like someone wanting to say 'and ... not' — so 'nor am I surprised' is really like saying 'and I'm not surprised'. Using this construction requires the usually rather archaic-sounding subject/verb word order reversal. |
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