Ich mochte ihn noch nie

Hi,

I have just seen this sentence "Ich möchte ihn noch nie" which means "I have never liked him".

Maybe I have asked about this previously. Is it correct understood that the sentence can be written "Ich möchte ihn nie" and have the same meaning? but that we can add emphasis / more powerful by adding "noch"?

Best,
Rex 
 

Hallo Rex,

Nie and noch nie can be a bit tricky.

Generally speaking, nie means "never" and noch nie means "never before." So you could say Das habe ich nie gemacht "I have never done that" or Das habe ich noch nie gemacht "I have never done that before." We can understand noch nie in one of two ways: as being less final than nie - there is the implication that something has never happened, but it could happen in future - OR we can understand it as being more emphasized than nie (as you've suggested). 

The example you've given would fall into the second category. So if you say Ich mochte ihn noch nie, you're saying essentially "I've never (really) liked him," and if you say Ich mochte ihn nie, you're saying "I never liked him." 

(Careful with those umlauts - ich mochte means "I liked" and ich möchte means "I would like.")

I hope that this helps to clarify things!

Tschüss!

Liss

P.S. - I think you may have been thinking of the previous discussion we had on noch vs. immer noch. If in future you have a question and you're not sure if we (or anyone else on the forum) have talked about it already, you can do a check using the forum search function, which should help you to see if there's already a thread on that topic.