Grammar
La négation, or French negation, is fairly simple. There are a few exceptions to consider, though, so today we will focus on mastering the basics and moving on to exceptions.
The most basic (and most common) way to negate a sentence in French is to place ne before a verb and pas after, as in:
Example:
Je ne suis pas fatigué. I am not tired.
Suis is the je form of être (to be), so utilizing the ne…pas form puts a negative spin on the sentence.
Let’s try another, this time using a verb starting with a vowel.
Example:
Non, elle n’aime pas la musique classique. No, she does not like classical music.
In this instance, we used the verb aimer (to like, love). When the verb begins with a vowel, we drop the e and replace it with an apostrophe. Otherwise, the fluidity of pronunciation would be compromised.
Let’s try one more, this time using ne…jamais (never):
Example:
Je ne chante jamais. I never sing.
By utilizing the ne…jamais form with the verb chanter (to sing), we are able to intensify the negation from “I don’t sing” to “I never sing.”
The ne…pas form sandwiches between the verb it is negating for imparfait and le futur, but it is a little different when it comes to passé composé.
Negating Passé Composé:
We touched on the present perfect tense briefly when we went over conjugated forms of être. We’re going to build upon that foundation by negating être in passé composé, both as an auxiliary verb and a past participle. To do that, though, we are going to need to break down this tense even further.
You may have noticed that passé composé is a compound verb tense, meaning that it possesses two parts. The first is the present tense of the auxiliary verb, which will always be either être (to be) or avoir (to have), depending on the past participle of the verb we are working with. This past participle is the second part of the passé composé. So, the formula for this tense is:
CONJUGATED AUXILIARY VERB + PAST PARTICIPLE
Example:
Je ne chante jamais. I never sing.
This sentence used passé composé on aller (to go). As you can see, we conjugated the auxiliary verb être in the present tense. The past participle of aller is allé, so we place this directly after the auxiliary verb.
Now, let’s try one with être, which uses avoir as the auxiliary verb.
Example:
Elle a été malade toute la nuit. She was sick all night.
We conjugated avoir in the present tense to form our auxiliary verb; été is the past participle of être, so this is placed after the auxiliary verb.
Now that we understand the breakdown of passé composé, we can implement negation with this formula in mind. Since passé composé is compound, ne…pas takes on a bit of a different twist. In this tense, the ne…pas is sandwiched around the conjugated auxiliary verb.Example:
Je ne suis allé nulle part. I didn’t go anywhere.
Example:
Il n’a vu personne. He didn’t see anyone.
Example:
Je n’ai eu aucun respect pour lui. I didn’t have any respect for him.
Note: Aucun depends on the noun following it, so if the noun is feminine, change it to aucune.