Learn how to say "not" and "don't have" German
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| Hallo, ich heiße Laura. Hi everybody! I’m Laura. |
| Welcome to GermanPod101.com’s “Deutsch in 3 Minuten”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn German. |
| In our previous lessons, we learned how to use the verbs sein and haben. In this lesson, we’re going to learn how to turn these two verbs into their negative forms in order to say "I'm not" and "I don't have." |
| So let's take an example. Imagine you are about to go to a party with a German friend. You ask him if he is ready, and he answers Nein, ich bin nicht fertig. |
| Then, you ask him if he has a car to use to go to the party and he says Nein, ich habe kein Auto. |
| Let’s look at these two negative sentences: |
| Nein, ich bin nicht fertig. |
| Nein, ich habe kein Auto. |
| [slowly] Nein, ich bin nicht fertig./Nein, ich habe kein Auto. |
| In each sentence, you have Nein and the little word, nicht or kein. These are the special words used to make a verb negative in German. |
| You have to use the word nein, German for “no” just if you want to emphasize the negation. |
| So let's have a look on the way to switch from affirmative to negative. |
| First with the verb sein.If your friend *were* ready, he would say Ich bin fertig, “I am ready.” But he actually said Ich bin nicht fertig. |
| So basically, you just have to put the word nicht after the verb. |
| Now let's look at an example with the verb haben, "to have": |
| Remember, You use haben, if You are possessing something, or not. |
| "I have a car" is Ich habe ein Auto, and "I don't have a car" is Ich habe kein Auto. |
| If you’re talking about a single object, like Auto, just add k before the indefinite article ein/ eine/ einen and you’ll get the negative version kein/kein/keinen and so on. |
| Finally add the noun like Auto, “car”, Haus, ”house”, Wasser, “water”and so on. |
| Here is another example: Ich bin hungrig. means : I am hungry. In the negative version it would be: Ich bin nicht hungrig, I am not hungry. |
| You can also use the verb haben and the noun Hunger by saying: Ich habe Hunger, which literally means I have hunger or in correct English: I am hungry. |
| And the negative way is then : Ich habe keinen Hunger. |
| Easy, don't you think? So now you can turn many sentences into negative form just by adding these little words NICHT or KEINE for instance. |
| Now it’s time for Laura’s tips. |
| If you want to answer negatively but without being too direct, you can add the word sehr after the nicht. It literally means “very” but we use it also like "really" |
| So if you want to say "I'm not really hungry." it will be Ich bin nicht sehr hungrig. |
| Get ready for the next lesson because we are going to study a really important part of the German language: using adjectives. |
| I'll be waiting for you in the next Deutsch in 3 Minuten lesson. |
| Bis bald! |
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