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Lesson Transcript

Hallo allemaal! Ik heet Gabriella. Hi everybody! I’m Gabriella.
Welcome to DutchPod101.com’s “Nederlands in 3 minuten”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Dutch.
In our previous lessons, we learned how to use the verbs zijn and hebben. In this lesson, we’re going to 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 Dutch friend. You ask him if he’s ready, and he answers Nee, ik ben nog niet klaar. “No, I’m not ready yet.”
Then, you ask him if he has a car to use to go to the party and he answers Nee, ik heb geen auto. “No, I don’t have a car.”
Let’s break down these two negative sentences.
Nee, ik ben nog niet klaar.
Nee, ik heb geen auto.
[slowly] Nee, ik ben nog niet klaar. Nee, ik heb geen auto.
In the first sentence, with zijn, “to be”, the word niet is used to make the sentence negative. In the second sentence, with hebben, “to have”, the word geen is used to make the sentence negative.
So let's see how to switch from the affirmative to the negative.
First, using the verb zijn. If your friend *were* ready, he would say Ik ben klaar, “I am ready.” But he actually said Nee, ik ben nog niet klaar, “No, I am not ready yet.”
So, you just have to put the word niet after the verb to make it negative.
Now let's look at an example with the verb hebben, "to have"-
"I have a car" is Ik heb een auto, and "I don't have a car" is Ik heb geen auto.
So to make the sentence negative, you have to put the word geen after the verb.
But be careful, this is a little different to the affirmative version. In the negative sentence, the article een should be left out.
So now, how would you say "I don't like this restaurant?" For reference, “I like this restaurant” is Ik hou van dit restaurant.
To make the sentence negative, put niet after hou. Ik hou niet van dit restaurant. “I don’t like this restaurant”.
[slowly] Ik hou niet van dit restaurant.
Easy, don't you think? So now you can turn many sentences into their negative form just by adding this little word niet after the verb. When you use the verb hebben, “to have”, you use the word geen.
Now it’s time for Gabriella’s Insights.
If you want to answer negatively but without being too direct, you can add the word echt after niet. This will mean "I don't really..." and will sound softer and more polite.
So if you want to say "I don't really like fish," you would say Ik hou niet echt van vis.
Get ready for the next lesson because we are going to study a really important part of the Dutch language - using adjectives.
I’ll be waiting for you in the next Nederlands in 3 minuten lesson.
Tot ziens!

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