Ch 2 · Lesson 6Mandarin · Chapter 2 · Lesson 6 · Grammar primer
Negation bu mei
Prescribed by the AQA specification.
The short version
。Wǒ méi yǒu kāfēi.
Why?Hide
(yǒu) never takes (bù). It takes (méi) everywhere, giving (méi yǒu), and (bù yǒu) is not rare or formal, it is simply not Mandarin. The reason is categorial rather than arbitrary: possession is existence, and (méi) is the negator of existence and completion.
bú shì
Why?Hide
(bù) is fourth tone by default, but right before another fourth-tone syllable it is said bú: (bú shì), (bú qù), (bú yào). Before any other tone it stays bù: bù hǎo, bù lái, bù shuō. This is a rule of (bù) itself ( (yī) has a similar one), not a ban on two fourth tones in a row: (zàijiàn) and (diànshì) keep both. The character never changes.
Didn't is
。Wǒ méi qù.
Why?Hide
(bù) negates what is true now, what will be, habits and adjectives: (wǒ bú qù), I'm not going. (méi) negates what did not happen: (wǒ méi qù), I didn't go. (méi) already says 'did not', so the verb stays bare: a plain 'didn't' takes no (le), so (wǒ méi qù), never (wǒ méi qù le).
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.
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Lesson 6 of 19 in this chapter