The same rules that apply to jamais above apply to rien.
The word ‘rien’ translates to both nothing and anything. She never travels.įor the passé composé wrap ne…jamais around the auxiliary verb. You cannot have both pas and jamais in your sentence. For example, if you said, ‘Je ne mange pas jamais les frites’, it would be wrong. Make sure you don’t say ‘pas jamais’ because this would be a double negation. Je ne mange jamais les frites’ means I never eat French fries. For example, ‘Je mange les frites’ means I eat French fries. For these sentences, jamais replaces the word pas. Hence, to negate, the ne…pas goes around the ‘me’: Je ne me lève pas. The ‘me’ is the reflexive pronoun and it means ‘to myself’. For example, I get in up in affirmative is: ‘Je me lève’. In the ‘je’ form, these are verbs which have a ‘me’ in between the je and verb, such as ‘Je m’appelle’, which means my name is.įor reflexive verbs in the present tense, wrap ne…pas around the verb and the reflexive pronoun.
Reflexive verbs can be called ‘to myself verbs’. On this page you will find a complete lesson covering a comprehensive guide of the French passé composé for beginners. Once again, the rule is to wrap ne…pas around the auxiliary verb. It is tempting to make this mistake because the pas comes after the verb in the present tense: ‘Je ne mange pas’. Note, a common mistake is to put the pas after the past participle and say, ‘Je n’ai mangé pas’. For example, to say ‘I didn’t eat’, say ‘Je n‘ai pas mangé’. In the passé composé (French past tense) wrap ne…pas around the auxiliary (helping) verb. Je ne ai pas (I don’t have) sound rough whereas ‘Je n’ai pas’ sounds pleasant. For example, ‘Je ne aime pas’ (I don’t like) sounds awkward whereas ‘Je n’aime pas’ sounds much smoother to the ear. When you are speaking you can think of the ne…pas as a little speedbump causing negation. You can think of this as the ‘ne…pas’ sandwich where the ne and pas are the bread and the verb is what comes in between.
In the present tense, negation is formed by wrapping ne…pas around the verb. This lesson covers all the negation rules with example sentences. French has many more negation expressions including ne…jamais (never), ne…rien (nothing) and ne…personne (nobody). For example, Je ne parle pas français (I don’t speak French). The most common French negation rule is to wrap ne…pas around the verb.