ABSTRACT

Negation in English and in German can be expressed by using negating words, such as 'nicht', 'nie' and 'kaum', but when it comes to the position of these words, things work somewhat differently in English and in German. In German, the full form 'nicht' is always used independently to negate whole statements or elements in a sentence; in English the same is often true, but there is also the common practice of contracting 'not' into '-n't', which is added to the relevant forms of 'to be', 'to have', 'will', 'would' and modal verbs. There is some scope for variation in how negation is expressed in German. The main difficulty is that idiomatic English translation may not give a hint as to how to arrive at an equivalent German version. In English colloquial speech the effect of negating a statement twice in one phrase can sometimes be what learners might expect: two is more than one, so the negation is intensified.