"I don't put no salad dressing in my salad"

[Arcade Man D]

She kept laughing & the other lady I was sitting beside, said that she knows I'm Puerto Rican & that's the way we talk. Something to do with sentence structure in spanish & all that.

That's exactly what it is. In Spanish and other Romance languages, a "double-negative" construction is used. However, English is a Germanic language (well, mainly, you know how it is about English following other languages down the dark alley and knocking them out, rifling through their pockets for loose grammar), and Germanic languages use a single-negative construction.

"Yo no quiero ni manzanas ni zanahorias." in Spanish would be written in English one of two ways due to the difference in negation grammar.

"I don't want either apples or carrots."
-or-
"I want neither apples nor carrots." (Though few average people would actually use the latter).

[rvdammit]

And totally ignores that English, dependent on context, allows for negative reinforcement.

"I can't get no satifaction", to qoute the Stones, means there is no satifaction at all, rather than the more clinical(?) interpretation of being satisfied.

[Gawdzillers]

Don't worry, my grammar ain't no good neither.

[Jester]

And what's the description if she's out of the skimpy bikini?

Shit-eating grin permanently etched on my face?

[dalesys]

Shit-eating grin permanently etched on my face?

On Key West wouldn't an equally apropos phrase be "Grinning like a seagull eating offal."?

(which sounds the same in my idiolect as ...eating awful...)

[Jester]

No, not really. In Key West a more appropriate phrase might be "grinning like a bum digging through a well-stocked trash can." Or something like that.

(I haven't noticed a plethora of gulls down here, surprisingly. We do have our share of bums, though. Not the best thing about Key West, certainly, but not place is perfect.)

[Kogarashi]

Meh, I'm an English major and like to throw people by alternating between precise grammar and hick slang. Double negatives are fun! Triple negatives are funner!

And yeah, I might have laughed at first too, but I would have at least tried to save face by explaining why rather than continuing to laugh.

I haven't noticed a plethora of gulls down here, surprisingly.

That's 'cause all your gulls are hanging out in the parking lots up here.