Coffee Break Spanish - A guide to negation in Spanish | The Coffee Break Spanish Show 1.09

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Do you know how to form a negative statement in Spanish? How many negative words are you familiar with? In this episode of the Coffee Break Spanish Show we look at some rules that can help us correctly use negative structures in Spanish.➡️ Click to access the blog article and worksheet which accompany this episode ⬅️Like the look of the Coffee Break mugs featured in our episodes? Purchase your very own mug here! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Coffee Break Spanish Welcome back to the Coffee Break Spanish show. I'm Mark and I'm Annabelle. How's this? I'm very well, you're delighted to be back with another episode of the Coffee Break Spanish show. In these weekly episodes, we're helping you take your Spanish further one coffee break at a time.

And if you are looking at my delightful mug here, my Coffee Break Spanish mug, then you can get your own Coffee Break Spanish mug. There is a link below this video. If you're watching the video version that is, and don't regret to. subscribe to our channel. Yes, and if you're listening to the podcast, then also subscribe to our podcast.

If you are listening to the podcast, you'll be able to find our mugs at coffeebreak gift shop.com. Anyway, enough of a bit. Annabel, what are we talking about today? What are we talking about today? Today, we're going to negation. So using negative words in Spanish, which doesn't work exactly as it does in English. No, and that is what we're going to be today. Well, then we're going to start.

Vanga, we're going. So negation in Spanish, Annabelle. Tell us a little more about what you're thinking about today. Well, let's start simple and we are going to negate something, an statement using no before the verb. Yeah. So I ablo Spanish. No ablo Spanish. So we use no before the verb. No there means not or don't. I don't speak Spanish. Exactly. I do not speak Spanish. And no

I'm not Scottish So I am not Scottish You are not Scottish No eris Scotsia I'm Scottish No so I'm Scocese No soy Scocesa So simple negation

using no before the verb And is the verb But also it's like compounds And also the pronouns That goes with it Yeah Like for example

I don't know No lo see Yeah And that's something That's something that we've always got to remember in Spanish When we're saying

I don't know What is it You don't know? is it. So I don't know it. No lo say. I don't understand it. No, lo, entieno. Very well. No is coming before both the verb and that pronoun, lo. That's right. And with other pronouns, like reflexive pronouns in no me desperte. Okay, so the verb despera to wake up. So no me desperte, the preterete tense, I didn't wake up in time for your Spanish lesson perhaps. So we're seeing no come before these pronouns, a reflexive pronoun there. We saw it before

the direct object pronoun and so on. But there are other situations where we need to think more about negatives, in particular when we actually need to use a double negative in Spanish. So it's very common to talk about like this double negation because in English we say, I don't see anyone or I see no one. Yeah. So you don't say I don't see no one. I don't see no one. I think in some regional English varieties, we might hear, I don't see no one, and it still means I don't see anyone. But in formal English, we would not use that. Well, in Spanish, we do. And it's correct. It doesn't sound wrong in Spanish.

Let's look at how that works. Okay, first we need to know, like, what are those type of, like, negative words that we're going to be using. No is one of them. We also have Nunca or Hamas. Okay, so Nunca, meaning never, and Hamas also. meaning never or Nunca Hamas together, never ever.

That's perfect. We also have Tampoko. So Tampoko is like neither. And Nadia. No one.

Ninguino or Ninguino, Ninguna. So not a single. And nothing. Nothing. So all of these negative words,

we're going to use these but we're going to learn two ways of using them in most cases. Uh-huh. So the first one is the double negative. We are going to be using

no, then the verb and then one of these negative words. Okay, give us an example of that. Yes, for example, no bimos nothing. So no bimos nada. Bimos is bare in the preterate. We didn't see anything.

But literally, if we're translating that, no bimos, we didn't see nothing. We didn't see nothing. Of course, that's wrong in English. So we didn't see anything. It means we didn't see anything. So no, verb, and then that negative word. Another example is no me has

called nobody. No me has called nobody. So not to me has called no one. No one called me. No me has called nobody. Or no have desajunado,

Tampoko. Okay. No. So I have not had breakfast. A lovely verb in Spanish to have breakfast desayunar. And there you're saying

Tampoko. So I Tampoko. haven't had breakfast either in this case. Yes, right. Now, one important thing to mention, and that is this idea that in mathematical situations, we always say that two negatives make a positive. If you take minus one and add minus one to it, then you get minus two.

I think maths is not my strong point. But in Spanish language, two negatives don't make a positive. We've got no, be most nada. We didn't see anyone. We still didn't see anyone. It's not a positive in there. Okay. And the reason why is because we need that negation before the verb.

Okay, so the verb must be negated in one way before we have the verb. This is important. Why? Because now if we have that negative word before the verb, we are not using a no. Brilliant. So let's take, let's take nada again. We had no bimos nada. We didn't see anything.

But we could take nada, bring it in front of the verb. And because the verb's already negated with the nada, we don't need to add the no. So we saw nothing. There is there any kind of different meaning with or different sort of inference with nada vizmos? Well, it's emphatic because you are changing the word order. So is that, oh, did you see anything? No vimos nada.

Nada, nada, nada, nana. Yeah, okay, so we didn't see anything, but not, we saw absolutely nothing. There's a possibility that in English we could think of the, nada, bimos, like we saw nothing, as opposed to we didn't see anything. But then we could argue about whether one of those words is more, more emphatic or more negative or whatever. But yeah, so if we can think about these two options, we've got no, bimos, nada, we didn't see anything, or nada bimos. What we need to remember is that we don't need the no in the second example where we're starting with our negative word.

So taking again like that example, the no me has called nobody. We can say, nobody me has called me. Okay, so nobody me has called me. So perhaps we're thinking here, did Jorge call you or did the Ricardo call you or did Angela call you? Nadia, nobody me has called me. No one called me. So it's a little more emphatic. That's right.

Okay, good. And our last example was, No, I desayunado, so? That would become Tampoko a desiunado. Perfect. Now we've got a little challenge

for our listeners here, and what is going to happen is we're going to give you an English expression and you've got to come up with both ways in which this would be negated in Spanish.

So you need to use the no verb and the negative word, and you also need to do the option where you're starting with the negative word and finishing with the verb. Very well.

So the first challenge is, I don't know anything. Okay, so you've got to come up with both versions of I don't know anything or I know nothing. And we're going to give you 10 seconds to do this. Okay. Well, time, no? So I don't know anything or the same could be said of I know nothing. What would be our first version of this? No say, nothing.

Yeah. So we've got the no coming before the verb. No say and they. After the verb, meaning I know nothing, I don't know anything. But we could also say, nada say. That's why. Nada say.

I don't know anything, okay? You're really exclaiming your innocence there. Nada say, okay. Let's try another one. This time we'd like you to say, no one buys there, as in no one buys in that shop. No one goes to that shop to buy things. But literally, no one buys there.

So one's just a little bit. No one buys there? Well, we also have two options. Nadia Compa Aji or No Compa Nadiajee. Yeah, so that was a little more tricky to think of because No Compa

Nadiae We've got no coming before the verb, no and then Nadia, being the subject of the verb, no compra nadie to think of the verb, Nadia

no one buys there. A little trickier. Okay, one more. Okay, so the last one is no client had it. Okay, so not a single client had it. And it we can use as lo. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Okay, so 10 seconds. Tiempo. So no client had it. Let's go with Ningun cliente, L'Otou. Perfect. So Tener in the preterate, Tuo.

Ningun cliente lo tubo. Or we could say, no, lo tuvo no, lo took none, none, couldn't we also use Tenia here. Ningun cliente, yeah.

So if you came up with Tenia and the imperfect, then that works too. So well done. No, excellent. Good job. We hope that you have enjoyed this lesson. As ever,

if you would like to see the examples that we've used written down, then we've got a blog post available, and you can find the link for that in the description of this episode. And if you need,

like you would like more help with your Spanish. You can also get regular free email lessons. And in order to get those, you need to visit coffeebreaklanguages.com slash Spanish. In our emails, we include lots of different types of lessons, including grammatical lessons, vocabulary lessons, lessons about idiomatic expressions and culture, all of that in your inbox regularly.

So we hope you sign up for that. For now, we'll say much gracias. No, yes, like you, Mark. And as to the next. Happy coffee breaking. You have been listening to a coffee break language's production for the Radio Lingua Network. Copyright 2023 Radio Lingual Limited. Recording copyright, 2023 Radio Lingual Limited.

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