Grammar for Everyone - Barbara Dykes 2007

Past tense and past participle
Introduction
Part II The parts of speech

I done it - I did it

This is an error of tense resulting from confusion between the past tense and the past participle (see pages 117-8). Here the past tense is required:

He did it.

Other verb forms similary misused:

We brang our books for we brought.

I aren’t going for I am not or I'm not.

I could have went for I could have gone.

Double negatives

In maths, we learn that two minuses make a plus. Logically, in language likewise, two negatives make a positive.

So: we did n’t have no water, means we did have (some) water. We’re not going no where, means we are going somewhere.

Similarly:

We did n't have hardly any rain.

Hardly or hardly any mean scarcely, so the implication above is that the rain wasn’t scarce.