This might sound familiar to you:
You want to say that you don’t do something, for example, you don’t travel by bus. You learn to use the word ‘nicht’: Ich fahre nicht mit dem Bus.
Then you want to say that you don’t have a car and say ‘Ich habe nicht ein Auto’ and your teacher corrects you because it should be ‘Ich habe kein Auto’.
And you think: “When do I need to use nicht and when kein (or keinen or keine)?”
In a nutshell:
Nicht goes with a verb
It is used when you don’t DO something.
Ich wohne nicht in Deutschland.
Ich esse meine Suppe nicht! (A sentence from Suppen-Kaspar)
Nein, ich räume mein Zimmer nicht auf! (Could be a sentence from a young child 😉)
Kein goes with a noun
It is used when you want to say that you don’t have a (whatever). And it’s used like ‘ein’ or ‘mein’ etc…
Ich habe keine Schwester.
Er hat keinen Hund.
Wir haben keine Kinder.
Sometime you need to decide what you want to emphasise on.
Ich trinke keinen Kaffee. I don’t drink coffee. (Emphasis is on coffee)
Ich trinke nicht gerne Kaffee. I don’t like drinking coffee. (Emphasis is on the drinking. I do drink it but I don’t really like it.)
This video is taken from my online course German grammar – word order If you would like to learn more about German word order use the coupon code BLOGPOST to get 10% off this course.
If you have watched the video you will have seen that in certain situations it is okay to use nicht instead of kein (Like ‘Ich habe nicht ein Auto …’). Did you see it?
