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64
UNIT NINE
Negatives
Introduction
In Unit 15 of Basic Dutch, basic principles of negation were discussed. There
are two common words to negate in Dutch: niet and geen. The word
geen is used to negate nouns with indefinite articles or no article, while
the word niet negates most other parts of the sentence. Unit 15 in Basic
Dutch also explained the various positions of niet. After a brief recap of
those principles, this chapter will continue with the position of niet in more
complicated sentence structures, and it will introduce some other words
used to negate: nooit, niets, niemand, nergens.
Negation with geen
The word geen negates indefinite nouns, that is nouns in the singular with
the article een or without an article, all plural nouns without an article,
and uncountable or abstract nouns such as suiker, water, tijd or geld.
Erik is geen leraar. Erik is not a teacher.
Erik heeft geen broers en zussen. Erik doesn’t have brothers and
sisters.
Erik neemt geen suiker in de koffie. Erik doesn’t take sugar in his coffee.
Negation with niet
The position for niet, the word we use to negate everything else in a
sentence, is generally as close to the end of the sentence as possible
(example 1). However, niet precedes prepositional phrases (example 2),
adverbs (example 3), and predicate adjectives (example 4). Niet follows
definite nouns (example 5), time expressions (example 6) and the words
er, hier, daar (example 7). Examples: