Learn how to say "not" and "don't have"
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| Ahoj, jmenuju se Veronika. Hi everybody! I am Veronika. |
| Welcome to CzechClass101.com’s “Česky za 3 minuty”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Czech. |
| In our previous lessons, you learned how to use the verbs být and mít. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to turn these two verbs into their negative forms in order to say "I'm not" and "I don't have." |
| So let's take an example. Imagine you are about to go to a party with a Czech friend. You ask him if he is ready, and he answers Ne, nejsem připravený. which means “[No, I am not ready.]” |
| Then, you ask him if he has a car to use to go to the party and he says Ne, nemám auto meaning “[No, I don´t have a car.]”. |
| Let’s look at these two negative sentences: |
| Ne, nejsem připravený. |
| Ne, nemám auto. |
| [slowly] Ne, nejsem připravený./Ne, nemám auto. |
| In each sentence, you have ne and the prefix ne- connected to the verb. These are the special words used to make a verb negative in Czech. |
| You have to use the word ne, which is Czech for “no” only if you want to emphasize the negation. |
| So let's have a look at the way to switch from affirmative to negative. |
| First let’s look at the verb být. If your friend *were* ready, he would say Jsem připravený meaning “I am ready.” But he actually said Nejsem připravený. |
| So basically, you just have to add the prefix ne- to the verb. |
| Now let's look at an example with the verb mít, meaning "to have": |
| Remember, you use mít if you possess something, or if you don’t. |
| "I have a car" is Mám auto, and "I don't have a car" is Nemám auto. |
| You can add a noun like auto meaning “car”, dům meaning ”house”, tužku meaning “pen” and so on. Don't forget that all these words have to be in the accusative case. |
| Here is another example: Jsem hladový. means “I am hungry.” In the negative version it would be: Nejsem hladový, meaning “I am not hungry.” |
| You can also use the verb mít and the noun hlad by saying: Mám hlad, which literally means “I have hunger” or in correct English: “I am hungry.” |
| And the negative way is then: Nemám hlad. |
| It’s easy, don't you think? So now you can turn many sentences into the negative form just by adding the prefix ne- to the verbs. |
| Now it’s time for Veronika’s Insights. |
| You can also use the verb mít with abstract nouns. So if you are lucky, you can say: Mám štěstí. Or if you are not: Nemám štěstí. Štěstí means “good luck” in Czech. |
| Or you can say it the other way round: “I have a bad luck” is Mám smůlu. Or if you don’t have bad luck, it’s Nemám smůlu. |
| Get ready for the next lesson because we are going to study a really important part of the Czech language: using adjectives. |
| I'll be waiting for you in the next Česky za 3 minuty lesson. |
| Ahoj! |
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