も particle use in a story


I have two lines in a story that I am reading that say:

>   1. 誰も信じていなかった
>   2. 少しも信じていなかった
>

For 1, is it “everyone did not believe” (“No-one believed”), or is it
“Everyone believed”?

And for 2, same thing. Is it “I do not believe in very little” (“I believe in
a lot”), or “I believed in little” (I did not believe much”)?




  1. 誰も, いつも、何も etc plus negation is always no one, never, nothing etc
  2. I think "even" is a good approximation for も in many cases as @ben-yang suggested. Less literal translation of 少しも will be "not at all", "not in the least" etc. It actually appears as an entry in the dictionary <https://jisho.org/search/%E5%B0%91%E3%81%97%E3%82%82>

Re "everyone", it seems you can use 誰もが信じていた for "everyone believed", but I am
not sure how common it is as compared to みんな信じていた。

