Weirdness

I just taught my daughter the difference between negating the verb in a French sentence and negating the object.

The example I used was that if you want to say I see something, you'd say "Je vois quelque chose", and to say "I don't see something", it'd be "Je ne vois pas quelque chose". But you could also say "I see nothing", which would be "Je ne vois rien". "I didn't see something" and "I saw nothing" essentially mean the same thing (okay, not exactly) but the sentence structure is different. You use that leading ne both times, but in one you use pas to negate the verb, while in the other you use a 'negative form' of the pronoun object. I saw an interesting article once about how it really changes the mood of the sentence when you go from changing the verb to changing the object. Didn't entirely understand it, but it was interesting. True in English, too, of course.

And the weird part is, I understand it, and she didn't.