Today, we’re going to learn about negation with words like, “not” and “no”.
First, let’s look at a couple of examples :
I have not read this book : मैंने यह किताब नहीं पढ़ी (है)
He does not do good work : वह काम नहीं करता (है)
For both of these sentences, (है) is in parentheses. That’s because placing है at the end of a sentence is sometimes optional. In English as in Hindi, you can create a negative sentence with the positive verb है.
Like in these examples :
Nowadays he doesn’t go to the office : वह आजकल दफ़्तर नहीं जाता है
He is not here : वह यहाँ नहीं है
In all four sentences, the word for “not” was नहीं. In all these sentences नहीं was placed before the main verb.
Let’s do a sample practice. If “I will go” in Hindi is मैं जाऊँगा, what is “I won’t go”?
The answer is: मैं नहीं जाऊँगा
Now let’s look at a sentence like this:
No, this is not mine either : नहीं, यह मेरा भी नहीं है
नहीं can also mean “no” as in the example above.
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