German · Chapter 14 · Lesson 2 · Grammar primer

Negation

Prescribed by the AQA specification - revisited.

The short version

Kein is k plus ein, and it goes where ein went

If the noun would have ein in front of it, or no article at all, negate it with kein. Everything else takes nicht: verbs, adjectives, places, and nouns with der, die, das or a possessive. Ich habe kein Buch means no book at all; Ich habe das Buch nicht means not that particular one.

Ich habe keine Zeit.

I have no time.

Nicht goes late, but stops before the last verb

To negate a whole sentence, push nicht towards the end: past the verb, the pronouns and the nouns with der. Stop it in front of an adjective, a place, or the infinitive or participle waiting at the end of the clause. So the neutral order is Ich kann heute nicht kommen.

Ich kenne den Mann nicht.

I don't know the man.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

Read the full article · 9 min read

Practice

Practise this lesson

10-question session

One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 20 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.

Lesson 2 of 16 in this chapter

Back to the curriculum