French Negation Made Easy

When you start your language learning journey, there are a lot of things you learn right away and a lot of things that are saved until later. Negation is one of the things that gets saved until later. It just isn't necessary when you first begin and it can confuse learners. However, if you want to be fluent in a language, you have to know how to make a negative sentence in it.

French negation isn't difficult, but it does have a learning curve. It's different from how English negation works so if that's your only point of reference, learning a new form of negation can be confusing. If you speak another language, though, then you're already familiar with how negative sentences are formed differently from one language to another.

No matter how many languages you already speak or what your level of French is, here's a guide to help make learning French negation a little easier.

How is French Negation Different?

Since this post is in English, we're going to use English as our language of comparison.

In English, you usually only need one aspect to form a negative sentence. This may be not, -n't, never, none, neither, no, or anything of the like. You place this aspect before the verb that is negative such as in the sentences "I don't like dogs" and "She never calls me".

In French, there are always two aspects in negative sentences: ne + pas. Depending on what you're saying, the second aspect (pas) will change. Most commonly, it changes to jamais or rien to form ne jamais (never) and ne rien (nothing). There are other ways to negate a sentence than this simple ne pas structure, but this post won't dive into them.

There are, of course, other differences between French and English and if you're interested in reading about more, check out this past blog where we cover that more.

How to Negate Something in French

While it may sound more complicated since French requires two aspects for negation, it's important that you don't lose motivation to keep learning! Negating something in French really isn't that hard and once you become familiar with the general idea, you'll find that it's one of the easier grammar structures to learn.

Even if you've never learned another language before, learning how to form negative sentences in French isn't that complicated. You've come this far in your French learning journey. If you can figure out the present tense conjugation, then figuring out how negation works won't be hard at all. Trust me.

Where to Place the Negation in French

The first thing you need to know when forming negative French sentences is where to place the negation. In English, it goes before the verb that is being negated. In French, it varies a little.

In standard French sentences with only one verb, the negation will go around the verb. Let's take our previous example sentence "I don't like dogs". In French, you would place ne before the verb (in this case, aimer) and pas after it. You would then have: Je n'aime pas de chiens. The ne becomes n' because the verb begins with a vowel, and as you probably know by now, French doesn't like when two vowels are together as they would be if we said ne aime pas.

If you have a compound tense where the verb is technically two parts (such as in the passé composé), the negation goes around the active verb. Here's how this would look in the sentence "I didn't like dogs": Je n'ai pas aimé de chiens. The ne pas goes around ai which is the active part of the verb structure.

When there is a verb and an infinitive in a sentence, the negation will move. If you want to negate the verb and not the infinitive, follow the same pattern as above: ne + verb + pas. Here's an example with the sentence "I don't want to like dogs": Je ne veux pas aimer les chiens.

However, if you want to negate the infinitive, the ne pas structure will stick together and should be placed before the infinitive. In the sentence "I'm afraid I don't like dogs", place the ne pas as such: J'ai bien peur de ne pas aimer de chiens. The de may not always appear before the ne pas. It depends on the active verb and how it incorporates infinitives. When you negate an infinitive, though, the ne pas structure will always stay together and go in front of the verb.

Possible French Negation Structures

As I said above, there are other ways to negate a sentence than what will be covered in this post. They are a little more complicated, though, so I suggest you focus first on standard French negation and then branch out into the other structures once you're more confident.

Just like English has several words to negate something based on what you want to say, French does too. While ne will always remain the same, pas may change. This doesn't change where you place it, though. The second aspect of French negation will always come after ne or the verb.

Here are the main ways to negate something in French:

• ne pas = not
• ne plus = no longer/not anymore
• ne jamais = never
• ne rien = nothing/not anything
• ne personne = nobody/no one/not anyone

If you want a video that explains these a little more in-depth, check out this YouTube video for a good explanation. She covers the standard French negation forms listed here as well as a few others, and if you tend to be a visual learner, her channel can be a great resource.

Put Your French Into Practice

Now that you've taken a look at French negation structures, it's time to put your knowledge into practice. I know it feels early, but the best way to help retain the things you learn is by practicing them right away. To help with this, here are a few sentences you can practice with. The answers are all at the end of this post.

In this first section, you can choose whichever negation structure you think fits best. There may be more than one answer that works and that's fine. The point of this exercise is to simply become more familiar with placing the negation structures and using them.

Part 1

1. J’ai un chien
2. Elle aime les chats
3. Nous avons une voiture
4. Ils voyagent
5. Il mange les oeufs

In this second part, translate the English phrases into French. All the vocab you need can be found in the first part. In this part, there are correct answers, but only because it's a translation exercise so you can practice multiple forms of negation.

Part 2

1. He doesn’t have a dog
2. She never eats eggs
3. We no longer travel
4. They don’t see anyone
5. I don’t have anything

Don’t Lose Motivation!

This has been a pretty focused grammar lesson so I hope you aren't discouraged. Negation is an important aspect of learning and speaking a language, but so is staying motivated. Be careful not to burn yourself out early on in your French learning journey.

If you want to give your brain a break but still get some passive learning in, check out these French TV series. Watching TV series and movies in your target language is a great way to immerse yourself in a language at home and help you keep learning. No matter what show or movie you decide to watch, I promise that there will be some negative sentences for you to recognize!

Answers for Exercises 1 & 2

Part 1

1. Je n’ai pas/plus de chien
2. Elle n’aime pas/plus les chats
3. Nous n’avons pas/plus une voiture
4. Ils ne voyagent pas/plus/jamais
5. Il ne mange pas/plus/jamais les oeufs

Part 2

1. Il n’a pas de chien
2. Elle ne mange jamais des oeufs
3. Nous ne voyageons plus
4. Ils ne voient personne
5. Je n’ai rien