Hello everyone,
and welcome to a new episode of the German is Easy – Learn German Online Course. And this time we’ll have a look at the perfect topic for a hot summer day:
The position of “nicht”
There are lots of explanations out there, and honestly, most of them don’t really actually get it.
They usually talk about sentence negation vs element negation, which is is not all wrong, but it’s also not really all that helpful for learners in that it raises more and more questions, the closer you look.
As with word order, most of the standard material kind of fails to look under the hood. And I do include textbooks in that.
They explains symptoms, not the cause.
So we’ll try a slightly different approach.
One that captures the underlying mechanics.
Seriously though, my approach is pretty AWESOME because all we need to understand the position of nicht is one rule.
And the best thing is: this rule has no exceptions. WOW!!
Oh and we also need a very very open mind for this to work.
So get yourself a coffee, a tea or a beer and discover the awesome world of saying no in German.
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your explanations are cool! please don’t stop!
Nah, I won’t.
Also, wenn die Königin der Nacht sagt: “Fühlt nicht durch dich Sarastro Todesschmerzen, so bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr” — bedeutet das, dass Sarastro auf jedem Fall stirbt, und die Königin will einfach sicherstellen, dass es seine Tochter macht? Oder ist die Wortordnung vom Satz nur für die Musik verändert, und bedeutet nichts besonderes? Wie fühlt es für einen Muttersprachler an?
Die Satzstellung ist extrem “theatral” also klingt wie im Theater und man muss einen Moment “analysieren”, was da lost ist. Ich kann allerdings keine spezielle Betonung nach Erkennen, eben weil der Satz ganz klar NICHT den normalen Dynamiken folgt. Er bedeutet also nicht, dass Sarastro auf jeden Fall stirbt, und die Frage ist nur durch wen.
In “normalem” Alltagsdeutsch ist es:
– Entweder bringst du Sarastro um, oder du bist nicht mehr meine Tochter.
Apologies if this has been asked already!
In your example:
I am confused as I would interpret the second sentence as meaning “I am able to not sleep (ie able to stay awake)” rather than “I am unable to sleep”, which have quite different meanings. I understand that the first one is wrong, but my instinct would be to say that the ‘nicht‘ should appear before the ‘kann‘, as this negates the ability, rather than the sleep. Is this meaningless in German or am I missing something…? Thanks in advance!
You’re missing something and you’re on to something.
What you’re on to is the double meaning of “können”.
– Ich kann heute nicht schlafen.
This can technically mean two things:
a) I’m not able to sleep.
b) I’m able to not sleep (I can pull through)
Most people would assume it’s version a) unless contexts suggest otherwise or there’s something funky done with emphasis.
Now, what you’re missing is that “nicht” IS in front of “kann”. Only that “kann” has moved to the second position.
Here’s how it looks as a side sentence.
– Ich habe gesagt, dass ich nicht schlafen kann.
You can NOT have the “nicht” directly in front of “kann” in the original because pretty much NO modifiers go there. The position of the verb, including their modifyers is at the end. The move to position two is like part of the verb travelling for work, but the rest of the verbal phrase stays put.
Does that help?
I guess the emphasis thing is pretty similar to English so that makes a lot of sense – Dankeshön!
You know what… I honestly feel like my brain has opened up to a whole new dimension of German! As if a veil has been lifted and I can see everything all bright and sparkling :D. I just wish I had read this all sooner and saved myself months of confused anguish. I feel like I am now able to just naturally and without stress intuitively build German sentences and… just speak. Thank you, thank you, a million times thank you!
I’m really happy to hear that :)!! Danke dir für das schöne Feedback!
Your rule is very enlightening! But I’m still confused about such sentence “Ich konnte nicht schlafen.” By your rule, I feel like it should be “Ich konnte schlafen nicht.” to make it sounds normal to me.The original sentence’s like…I don’t know, “I was able to stay awake(‘not sleep’)” to me. Can you explain how you negate modal verb?
WEll, let’s transform it into a side sentence:
– Ich habe gesagt, dass ich nicht schlafen konnte.
Now you can see that the negation block is “schlafen können”. “being able to sleep” vs “not being able to sleep”.
Does that help?
Yeah…So you German basically treat modal verb and the second verb as a whole phrase. Got it… Thank you anyway. :)
Pleas excuse this question if it’s already been asked.
I was trying to understand the meaning of the sentence:
Ich habe immer noch nicht den neuen Song von Rhianna gehört
Google Translate says:
I still haven’t heard Rhianna’s new song.
—
I then took out the nicht to see what the original sentence would have been before adding the nicht:
Ich habe immer noch den neuen Song von Rhianna gehört
which Google Translates as:
I was still listening to Rhianna’s new song.
—
Is this how you translate them because I’m having a hard time getting from the positive translation to the negative translation.
I understand the nicht being before Rhianna’s new song because of your rule of placing nicht before the part of the sentence that is being negated.
Thanks and just want to say that I love your lessons. The problem I always have with German is trying to have a way to relate the German translation to something I can remember in English (since I am still thinking in English). I am a visual learner and your pictorial descriptions really give me a way to relate the German to something in my brain. Sorry for the long-winded explanation.
Vielen Dank
You have to think of “noch nicht” as a combination that means “not yet”.
The opposite of it is “already”.
– Hast du schon den neuen Song von R. gehört?
– Nein, noch nicht.
If you take out the “nicht”, the “noch” has to go as well, because otherwise, it would switch meanings from “yet” to this weird “also/before doing something else”.
Does that help?
The text alignment is broken for me on this article: it doesn’t respect the right border of the box. Is it just me or did something go wrong?)
No, it wasn’t just you :). The layout was indeed broken. It’s fixed now, thanks for letting me know!!
This is the topic that might break me or not in German. I am really challenged by this topic, as are most learners on Duolingo, if the comments/forums are an accurate sample.
I really hope my write up about it helps you, then. I have tried a different approach, precisely to avoid all of the confusion that comes from the myriad of exception we get when we use the common “rules”.
Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try my best to clear them up.
Did you get my comments about the newsletters, by the way?
Ahh. I just typed up a large question, but wasn’t logged in. After I submitted, I logged in, aber die Frage fehlte. :( It would be from ‘anonymous’ vor 10 Minuten.
No worries, nothing gets lost. I answered the comment :)
I am always trying to correlate what is presented here at YDG with the skills and drills of the great, all powerful, evil Duo Lingo (hereby referred to as only DL).
One sentence that keeps coming up in my rotation is:
Ich kann nächstes Wochenende keinen Marathon laufen.
I am looking at this sentence and its negation. I realize this has no nicht, but it has a kein…and close enough for me to ask the question here in the ‘nicht’ section.
The position of the negation (for me) says that I am not really ready to run a marathon per se, but other things are possible. Vielleicht joggen 5k oder Ich kaufe nächstes Wochenende schuhe ins Kaufhaus ein.
Versus:
Ich kann nächstes Wochenende nicht laufen.
Yes, I took out the Marathon, but does this now shift the statement to imply a broader reason for NOT RUNNING at all. i.e. fuß gebrochen, ich habe schon pläne, zw.
What about: Ich kann nächstes Wochenende einen Marathon nicht laufen.
Does that have any place at all in the language, and how would that compare to the examples above. Thank you.
“einen Marathon nicht laufen” sounds weird and native speaker would only say it on accident.
There is no real reason to separate the phrase “Marathon laufen”, it’s similar to thing like “Klavier spielen” or “Fahrrad fahren”… they form a unit that describes the activity.
Separating it would ONLY make sense if there was another verb with which “Marathon” could be such a unit and you want to contrast that to “laufen”.
But no one needs to say something like this in practice, so yeah.. not idiomatic.
Hope that helps :)
I’m a little confused about the last example.
“dass Thomas gestern mit Maria im Zoo nicht war”
You mention this version is not even translatable.
But it seems like this should be the correct / most neutral version, as in the example given previously: “… , dass ich gerne nicht schwimme”
So, nicht goes before what it negates, we are trying to say that Thomas was NOT at the blah blah blah..
Did I miss something?
“not translatable” was a bit of an overstatement. Of course the general sense of the sentence is a negation of being there. But it sounds incredibly strange/odd/wrong and I can’t capture its particular vibe in English.
That’s what I meant by not translatable – I can’t find an English counterpart that feels equally off.
Have you read part 2? If not, then do that first, that should clear up why the sentence is so weird.
omg ok german is more complicated than I thought :). Anyway thank you Emanuel for this new perception and an amazing article. Really nice
Glad you like it :)
I was with you until I tried a translation from written English to German.
In my limited understanding they all look like correct translations. But are they? Is a subordinate sentence needed to give context in the last two examples to “make” them correct or are they a correct sentence structure on their own?
Sentence 1 and 3 are pretty neutral and similar, so they’d both be good translations. Sentence 1 treats “Geld” more as a reference to what has been said before while 3 gives it a little more emphasis, but the difference is subtle.
Sentence 2 puts a strong focus on “my father”, so that’d be a translation for
– I’m not giving the money to my FATHER.
And yes, here you’d kind of need a fitting context to “justify” why you phrased it that way.
Let me know if that helps.
First time in my experience anyone has gone “under the hood”.
Super useful.
Yeah, most materials is just rehashing of other rehashed material at this point, especially on Youtube. Glad you like my approach and that it makes sense to you.
So, if nicht is at the end of a main sentence, what does it negate? By the logic that nicht precedes what it negates, nicht doesn’t negate anything when it is at the end of a sentence, does it? Let’s take a look at an example: “Ich schwimme gerne nicht.”. So by the “nicht precedes what it negates” logic, nicht doesn’t negate anything here (unless we put the sentence in side sentence mode, then it negates the verb). Is it then same saying: “Ich schwimme gerne nicht.” and “Ich schwimme gerne.” because nicht doesn’t make an impact on the rest of the sentence (which it doesn’t precede, thus it doesn’t negate it)?
I think you missed one very important thing… at the end of a sentence, there is a verb slot.
“Nicht” is NEVER behind that slot. That slot might be empty in a main sentence, but it’s still there.
– Ich schwimme gerne nicht [verb slot].
It gets filled in a side sentence:
– … , dass ich gerne nicht schwimme.
This is the counterpart to the first version. NOT this:
– …, dass ich gerne schwimme nicht. (WRONG)
So if there’s a “nicht” at the end of a main sentence, it negates the verb.
Your example, it says that you enjoy not swimming.
I think you should maybe read the post again, especially the first part.
No offense, it’s a lot to wrap your head around if you come from “classical” material.
But yeah, the true structure of German is the SIDE sentence structure, NOT the main sentence structure. And it’s not just my fringe theory, it’s actually backed by linguistics.
Without the second part, this one left me quite puzzled.
After I had read this part, I expected than in these 5 sentences:
#5 is a neutral negation and #1-#4 are accented negations (like specifically negating Thomas — “it was not Thomas who…”, specifically negating yesterday — “it was not yesterday when…”, specifically negating Maria — “it was not Maria with whom…” and specifically negating zoo — “it was not zoo where…”).
Happily, the second part have made it much more clear.
Good to hear the second part could clear it up :).
I think actually most Germans are hard pressed to explain why #5 is not really proper German.
…, dass nicht Thomas gestern mit Maria im Zoo war.( the nicht at the beginning seems rather odd to me)
…, dass Thomas gestern mit Maria im Zoo nicht war.
Sorry, perhaps i am an idiot…yet, i don’t understand why the first sentence is right and the last one is wrong..
I talk about that in part two.
Hi Emmanuel, this is a great blog and you are giving wonderful explanations. I am really grateful for that.
I have some questions while trying to follow this reasoning of “nicht” negates what it precedes and it does not negate what it does not precede. I also read Part 2 but still I have some doubts.
For example:
A)
dass ich heute nicht arbeite —> The scenery is me today and the big news is that I don’t work. So weit so gut :)
Then what it’s the problem with this:
dass ich nicht heute arbeite —> The scenery is me and we have 2 possible interpretations:
1) we negate only “heute”, so it goes something like: “it is not today when I work” (I worked yesterday and tomorrow, but not today)
2) we negate “heute arbeite”, so it would be: “I don’t work today”
Both options make sense to me, but this option “dass ich nicht heute arbeite” seems not be valid or at least I have not seen it at all.
B)
According to a previous comment with the Fornite spielen, I understood that the following two options are valid and correct
Which makes sense that both options are correct.
C)
And the last one:
“dass ich Tennis nicht verstehe” —> this is the classical one and we have me and Tennis in the scene and the big news is that I don’t understand it
dass ich nicht Tennis verstehe —> this is one I have never seen used, but following this logic would be negating Tennis and/or “verstehe”. And both of them make sense to me:
So, both versions are correct or not? I assume that the second is not because I have never seen it but I don’t understand why. Or maybe I am not following properly your logic.
Sorry for the long question and I apologize if the question is super silly, but I hate studying things by hard and that’s why I love your blog: things should make sense (at least most of the times) and that’s the best way of learning.
Thanks again!
These are great questions, actually :).
A) You are right that theoretically, “nicht heute arbeite” could refer to just “heute” or to the “bundle”. The question is, how defining is the time for the act of working. And it’s not very defining.
Things that “define” the work are the job, the colleagues or the payment for instance.
– …, dass ich nicht mit Thomas/bei Tesla/für 12 Euro arbeite.
All these sound natural and the part after “nicht” will be perceived as one unit because the additional info defines the work.
The time info “heute” however doesn’t really “define” the work, it just tells us when it happens, so it’s hard to perceive it as a unit with “arbeiten”.
The option “nicht heute arbeite” is totally valid and not wrong at all. It’s just got a strong focus on “heute”
B)
I have nothing to add here. Your analysis was spot on.
C)
Again, the version with “nicht Tennis” is NOT WRONG. It just sounds unusual and a teacher might short circuit into claiming it’s wrong, but it really isn’t.
This is an interesting case, because the most defining element for verstehen IS of course whatever it is that you understand.
And yes, “verstehen” tends to be perceived as a separate unit with the thing being part of the setup.
I think it might have something to do with the fact that you can only do it “once”.
Like, you can not “Tennis verstehen” every day or for three hours, but you can give someone a book every day or you can watch Netflix for three hours.
But this is just me trying to make my explanation work :).
I can see that “verstehen” doesn’t really seem to fit in. Ultimately, what I explained is a strong trend, not a fixed rule. Word order is the result of many forces pulling the elements in different directions.
“Klavier spielen” is a unit because it’s very much a “thing”. “Tennis verstehen” isn’t really.
And then take a look at this:
– …, dass ich kein Deutsch verstehe.
Here, you basically do have the negation BEFORE the object and here “Deutsch verstehen” is perceived to be the negated portion, kind of.
I hope this was somewhat helpful :)
Hi Emmanuel,
Many many thanks for your prompt response, again I really appreciate it.
Yes, these explanations were really helpful :)
It is interesting to see that:
– …, dass ich kein Deutsch verstehe.
as you said, here the negation is before the object and the following part is considered as an unit, while the version with nicht would be:
– …, dass ich nicht Deutsch verstehe. (as far as I understood from your previous answer would not be wrong but unusual, as the tennis example. And here the negation is only to Deutsch, because the part after the nicht is not super strong bound together and it is not a unit. And therefore the meaning would be like: it’s me and my understanding of the world in the scene and Deutsch is not part of it, like saying “It exists something else in this life that I understand and that is indeed not german”, which yeah is not the usual idea, because here the big news is that you are able to understand something in this world which is not german, like you know how to count up to ten, clearly not the big news that you don’t understand german, so kind of makes sense. Not sure if I have overanalyzed here the sentence but I hope that’s right haha)
and that the usual one would be:
– …, dass ich Deutsch nicht verstehe. (it’s me and german in the scene and the news is that I don’t understand it, maybe I read it)
I want to remark that your style of teaching and communicating is fantastic, the whole idea of mixing history, linguistics, current language usage, idiomatic expressions, common sense, deep explanations about the inner workings of the language and humor is really what a student needs.
And that’s why I think that kids are able to learn in this world, they ask “why” many many times because they want to get to the core and understand how something really works.
But somehow when we grow and become adults, we just settle with a plain and shallow explanation of the things, which it is kind of a dogma not to be discussed (and yes makes sense if you think about the speed and time it takes to gain new knowledge like that).
So yeah, I guess that a trade off between a deep understanding, some exceptions here and there, a bit of intuition, getting used to stuff and developing a long term sprachgefühl is the key.
Many thanks again and I will try not to bug you that much unless I cannot sleep whenever I don’t understand something in german.
P.S.: I will try next times to write in german, let’s see how it goes :)
[…] Devo absolutamente esta teoria ao blog Your Daily German. Eu dei uma adaptada da ideia dele aqui, mas é genial. Se você lê inglês, os posts dele são excelentes. Aqui está minha fonte para este post: <https://yourdailygerman.com/position-nicht-german/>. […]
You. My Friend. Are A Genius!
Vielen Dank. It’s a whole newww wooorrllld. A new fantastic point of view! :^)
Disney reference :) ?
Vielen Dank!!!!
Good explanation so far. It has explained an aspect of German grammar and syntax that for me is more complicated than the cases.
Cool, glad to hear that!! Hope part two doesn’t end up confusing you. In either case, I think with part one you can get very far already if you add some common sense to it :)