Spanish · Chapter 16 · Lesson 4 · Grammar primer
Negation advanced
Prescribed by the AQA specification.
The short version
Sino corrects a negative, pero just contrasts
Both come out as 'but' in English, and that shared translation is the whole trap. Pero simply adds a contrasting idea. Sino corrects a negative you have just made, so it needs a no in front of it. The test: if you could say 'but rather' or 'but instead', it is sino. Add que when a conjugated verb follows.
No es rojo sino azul.
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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14-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end.
Lesson 4 of 5 in this chapter