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In a text, I saw a comment to the effect of:

Да она хорошенькая, нечего сказать!

(I believe this was meant to be sarcastic, given the context.)

Then in another passage, I saw:

Хороший он человек, нечего и говорить!

Is there a difference between these two, or are they interchangeable?

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    maybe, хорошенькая? хорошенька is ungrammatical
    – Anixx
    Jun 7, 2014 at 15:37
  • +1 @Anixx, хорошенькая should be there, хорошенька is not a Russian word, such form is never used.
    – Yellow Sky
    Jun 7, 2014 at 16:16
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    I hope, you do understand that the answers below are correct specifically for this idiomatic use. As for "non-idiomatic" use, "Мне нечего сказать" is "I've got nothing to say" and "Нечего говорить!" is a slightly rough command "Stop talking" ("Do not talk", "No talking").
    – Shady_arc
    Jun 7, 2014 at 16:20

2 Answers 2

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In many (or even in most) cases (apart from the sarcastic usage coverad by @Annix) нечего сказать and нечего говорить are synonymous, meaning "there's no doubt", "there's nothing to discuss." Both of your sentences can be examples of this synonymous usage.

On the other hand, сказать implies one person speaking ('saying'), and говорить implies one ore more persons talking ('talking', 'discussing'), so Да она хорошенькая, нечего сказать! can mean "She's beautiful, I can't argue with that", and Хороший он человек, нечего говорить! can mean "He's a great person, no question."

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Нечего сказать in this sentence may be sarcastic or not, it expresses slight surprise of the speaker about the said fact "I have no words".

Нечего говорить here may be either somewhat unusual (and possibly not too correct) synonym to нечего сказать or it may be contraction from "нечего тут и говорить" meaning "here is nothing to argue about", expressing belief in the fact possibly contrary to the possible opponent's scepticism.

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