Should I be using nicht or some form of kein? And where do these words go in a German sentence? Does the meaning really change if you put nicht in the wrong place? It can be tricky to know how to negate a sentence like this, can’t it?
Es findet am Wochenende in Wien das letzte Konzert statt
Lots of questions today—but don’t worry, we’ve got the answers.
Grüß Gott, hallo! Ich bin Billy Badger, und das ist Bausteine drei—herzlich willkommen!
We already worked on negation in Bausteine eins und zwei, but now that we’re a bit more advanced, it’s time to go deeper. We’ll learn how to choose between kein and nicht, figure out exactly where nicht belongs in a sentence, and distinguish between clause-level and element-level negation. We’ll also see how moving nicht can change the meaning of a sentence and finally, we’ll find out what on earth verbal complements are—so that we know how to negate them properly.
That sounds like a lot, so let’s get started. Los geht’s!
The first thing to remember is this: You don’t really have a choice between nicht and kein. In any one situation, only one of them will be the correct choice.
kein
And of the two, kein is the easier, because it’s really just an article—a negative one. So it will always precede a noun, or maybe an adjective and a noun. And to do this it replaces articles, but only the indefinite article. So if the sentence you are negating has a definite article, you’re not going to use kein. Let’s check out some examples, in fact 3 or 4 different versions of the same sentence, :
Das ist meine Flöte
Das ist die Flöte
Das ist eine Flöte
Das sind Flöten
So, we’ve got sentences in the nominative. In our first sentence, we’re using a possessive adjective (meine), in the next we’re using the definite article, then we’ve got the indefinite article eine and finally we’re in the plural, where I’m not using an article just to state These are flutes.
Ok, so which ones can we negate with a form of kein?
Well, not the first one, because although meine behaves a little like an indefinite article it is not one.
The definite article can’t be negated with kein either, so we can pass over this.
Our next sentence has an indefinite article, so we can negate this with kein.
And in our last sentence, we don’t have an article, so we can negate this with kein.
So, the sentences we can negate with kein look like this.
Das ist keine Flöte. That’s NOT A flute.
Das sind keine Flöte. Those (or these) are not flutes.
These nouns were all in the nominative, but in any other case—like say the accusative—we do the same thing. Let’s take another 4 sentences:
Ich nehme meinen Fotoapparat mit.
Ich nehme den Fotoapparat mit.
Ich nehme einen Fotoapparat mit.
Ich nehme Fototapparate mit.
Again, this is straightforward. We can only negate the last two sentences with a form of kein, since the noun we’re negating is preceded by either the indefinite article or no article.
Ich nehme keinen Fotoapparate I’m not going to take a camera with me, or
Ich nehme keine Fotoapparate mit I’ll not take any cameras with me.
So, we should now have a good idea when exactly we can use a form of kein. Remember too that it gets the same endings as the indefinite articles. So, it will look like this in all the different cases.
nicht
Let’s look at how we use nicht. Let’s go back to the sentence we started with
Es findet am Wochenende in Wien das letzte Konzert statt. The last concert is in Vienna at the weekend.
Let’s try a few things out and see what’s possible.
It doesn’t make any sense to put it at the beginning, or even in the second position before the verb, since this puts our verb in the wrong position, and it can’t be right at the end, because statt is the separable prefix of our verb stattfinden, and nothing can come after that.
So this excludes a few possibilities. So here are our possibilities:
Es findet nicht am Wochenende in Wien das letzte Konzert statt.
Es findet am Wochenende nicht in Wien das letzte Konzert statt.
Es findet am Wochenende in Wien nicht das letzte Konzert statt.
Es findet am Wochenende in Wien das letzte Konzert nicht statt.
All of these are possible, but we can distinguish between clause-level and element-level negation, since in most of the sentences we’re negating a specific piece of information in the clause, rather than the whole statement or clause.
Can you see what’s happening?
Now, probably if we were negating just one particular element of a sentence, we wouldn’t necessarily include some of the others, but we’ll leave them in so that the effect is clear:
Es findet nicht am Wochenende in Wien das letzte Konzert statt.
It’s possible the concert in Vienna is going to happen, just not at the weekend. Nicht precedes the element it’s negating
Es findet am Wochenende nicht in Wien das letzte Konzert statt.
The concert is happening, and it is on at the weekend. Just not in Vienna, since this is the element it precedes.
So you can probably tell what this statement tells us.
Es findet am Wochenende in Wien nicht das letzte Konzert statt.
The concert’s on, and it’s in Vienna at the weekend, but it’s not the last concert. And you can tell this too by the intonational emphasis when spoken. nicht das letzte Konzert. So that leaves us with this sentence
Es findet am Wochenende in Wien das letzte Konzert nicht statt.
This time nicht is pretty much as close to the end as it can possibly get, since as we said it can’t follow the separable prefix statt. This negates the whole clause. The whole statement - all of the information. The last concert is not in Vienna at the weekend. No priority is given to any particular part of the statement. It’s just the whole thing we’re negating. This is probably the most usual and natural place to put nicht: Following the direct object.
Let’s look at a couple of more examples before we move on. For example:
Er fährt besonders schnell
Here, we want to say that he drives, just not particularly fast. So it makes sense to place before the part we want to negate.
Er fährt nicht besonders schnell.
And it’s the same story with our next example.
Er kocht sehr gern
If he doesn’t like cooking very much, then we need to put nicht before the part that says he does.
Er kocht nicht sehr gern.
In the next example…
Die Musik gefällt mir
…the only natural place to put nicht is at the end, since nicht will generally follow our conjugated verbs, as well as most dative and accusative object, especially pronouns.
Die Musik gefällt mir nicht.
Now, in our final example, where do you think nicht should go?
Sie hat mir seine Handynummer geschickt
Well there’s not many places it can. So it will be here towards the end, since we’re negating the whole statement - but of course not after the participle.
Sie hat mir seine Handynummer nicht geschickt
Verbal Complements
So this brings us to a couple of interesting examples that might be confusing. Let’s take these examples:
Im Winter läuft sie Ski
If we’re negating sentences like this, then we need to recognise that in each example, we don’t have a direct object, even though it might seem like it. Instead we have verbal complements, where a noun complements the verb.
For example, the verb for to ‘ride a bike’ is Rad fahren—which consists of a noun and verb, and this behaves much as a separable verb. So instead of treating ‘Rad’ as a direct object, we treat it as a separable prefix. And the same is true for the other examples and others like them:
Sie fährt im Sommer nicht Rad She doesn’t ride her bike in Summer
Er wollte nicht Klavier spielen He didn’t want to play piano
But note:
Of course there might be situations in which you want to emphasise that you’re not going to ride any bike or play any piano, rather than talking about bike riding and piano playing in general in which case you could feasibly say
Sie fährt im Sommer kein Rad She doesn’t ride her bike in Summer
Er wollte kein Klavier spielen He didn’t want to play piano
There are some other useful examples too like these ones.
Wir laufen nicht Gefahr, alles zu verlieren We’re not running the risk of losing everything
Im Winter läuft sie nicht Ski She doesn’t ski in winter
Finally, as well as nicht, you can of course, use nie to express never. And similarly, niemals does much the same thing. And luckily both of these follow the same rules. So that’s probably enough for today — But let me know—have I missed any important ways of negating?—I’ll bet you can think of some. Let me know in the comments. Danke fürs Vorbeischauen, ich hoffe, es hat geholfen. Alles Gute und tschüss.