Lessons on all the different types of French negation: negative adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, and conjunctions, plus different ways to say no, nothing, no one, and never.
The French prefix a- is added to adjectives and nouns to create their antonyms; it's sometimes called the "alpha privative" (a privatif). The most common English equivalents are a- and non-.
Compound tenses and moods are verb forms which are conjugated with two parts: a helping / auxiliary verb and a past participle, as in J'ai dansé. The word order can get a little complicated when additional grammatical structures like object pronouns and negation are introduced.
In English, two negatives are said to make a positive: that is, they cancel one another out, and this is grammatically unacceptable. In French, however, négation double is alive and well. Two negatives sometimes make a positive, while other times they combine to make the negation stronger or more specific.
The French negative adverb ne ... pas essentially means "not." In addition to being useful for negating any normal sentence, ne ... pas or even just pas is found in many expressions and proverbs. Learn how to say none of your business, to be stingy, quite a bit, and more with this list of expressions with (ne ...) pas.
The rule is that to make a French verb negative, you need ne in front of the verb and pas after it. The reality of how the French speak says otherwise.
Inverting subjects and verbs is easy enough - vous voyez => voyez-vous, but where do object, adverbial, and reflexive pronouns go? And what about negation? Take a look at this lesson to learn about all the possibilities.
N'importe literally means "no matter" or "(it) doesn't matter." This indefinite expression can precede an interrogative adjective, adverb, or pronoun when talking about something indefinite or non-specific.
In formal, usually written French, there are certain verbs and constructions that can be made negative with just ne - the inclusion of pas or some other negative word is not required.
Negative adverbs turn affirmative statements and questions into negative statements and questions. The most common English negative adverb is the word "not," but French is a little more complicated - quelle surprise ! ;-)