She had no money left. He SPENT it all at the weekend She didn't have ANY money left. He spent it all at the weekend In this case these sentences are interchangeable

They're both correct, but we would always add 'any' to the second - "John doesn't have any money left". Is there a difference in meaning? Not much. 'He had no money left' is slightly more emphatic, but the meaning is the same. Is there a diffference in usage? American English speakers tend to prefer constructions where 'have' is an ordinary verb ( taking the auxiliary do/did), whereas a British English speaker is more likely to use both constructions. Is there a difference in grammar? Yes! Please don't think that the 'no' is equivalent to the Spanish 'no' which you use to negate a verb. This 'no' has nothing to do with the verb - it belongs to the noun phrase and is the opposite of 'some'. Look at it this way: John = subject didn't have = verb (negative) any money = object (positive) or John = subject had = verb (positive) no money = object (negative) The grammar is different, but the meaning is the same. You can either make the verb negative ( as in the first example) or make the noun negative ( in the second example). It's a little like in maths, where you can end up with a negative in one of two ways : either positive + negative or negative + positive. Essentially, two ways of saying the same thing.

The first sentence is fine but the second sentence needs "any". John didn't have any money left. He'd spent it all at the weekend. John had no money left. He'd spent it all at the weekend. Both of these sentences are grammatically correct and the meanings are the same. I hope this helps, English Chris