Learn Italian: Nessuno aveva mai visto niente di così buffo. - Nobody had ever seen anything so funny.

In Italian, if a negative subject like nessuno comes before the verb, you must drop the non. Here, nessuno starts the sentence, setting up the negative structure. The other negative words, mai and niente, just stack onto this to mean nobody had ever seen anything.

Why is there a di between niente and così buffo?

When you follow an indefinite pronoun like niente, nulla, or qualcosa with an adjective, you must connect them with the preposition di. Therefore, anything so funny translates to niente di così buffo.

Why use the past perfect aveva visto instead of the regular past tense ha visto?

Aveva visto is the trapassato prossimo, used to describe an action that happened before another past action. In a story, it shows that up until that specific moment in the past narrative, nobody had experienced anything like it.

Why is mai placed right in the middle of the verb?