When expressing negation,
in English, you use “no” with nouns,
and “not” with verbs, adjectives or any other phrases,
which is quite straightforward.
In Chinese, we also have two commonly used negation words
不 and 沒,
however, the difference between when to use them is not as obvious,
but there are still rules for you to follow
so we’re going to learn about them today!
哈囉，大家好！ 哈啰，大家好！
I’m Grace from Grace Mandarin Chinese.
In this video, you’ll learn how to use 不 and 沒
to indicate negation in Chinese.
A lot of useful information is presented in this video,
so I highly recommend taking notes as we go along,
it’ll help you better retain and apply this knowledge in the future.
Okay, the first important rule to remember is:
When you want to say that a certain noun isn’t there or doesn’t exist,
use “沒（有）” before the noun,
it expresses the meaning of “to not have”,
indicating the non-existence of something. For example,
And you can omit the 有 and just say 我沒時間.
Another example,
You can also say 我的房間沒窗戶。
沒 and 沒有 express the same meaning,
so you can use them interchangeably.
Now you know how to negate nouns in Chinese,
but what about verbs and adjectives?
Both 不 and 沒（有） can be used to negate verbs and adjectives,
and that’s where the negation in Chinese gets a little bit tricky,
but don’t worry, here is a general rule for you
to understand the difference between 不 and 沒（有）：
不 is used to negate a static state,
that is, something more stable or unchanging
and it often involves personal judgments and thoughts.
However, 沒（有） is used to negate dynamic situations,
like the occurrence of an action or a change of state,
and usually is stating a fact without subjective thoughts in it.
This sounds kind of abstract
so now I’m going to tell you the specific situations
where you should use 不 and where you should use 沒（有）
Let’s first start with 不:
Remember? We said 不 is used to negate a static state,
so when negating a quality or a state, we use 不.
We place it before the verb or adjective. For example,
To say “He is tall”, we say “他很高”.
“高 tall” is a quality of the person and doesn’t usually change,
so we use 不 to negate it.
To say “He isn’t tall”, we say “他不高”.
Here are some more examples:
Since the attribute or characteristic in someone or something
is usually stable and unchanging, we use 不 as the negation word.
不 is also used to negate the verbs that express stative meaning,
like 是 (to be), 知道 (to know), 希望 (to hope), 怕 (to be afraid of),
because these types of verbs are expressing
states of mind, relationships or feelings
which are rather steady and unchanging, so we also use 不.
For example,
So remember, when negating a quality like 高 (tall)、冷 (cold)、大 (big)
or a state like 是 (to be) 知道 (to know) or 怕 (to be afraid of), we use 不.
不 can also be used to express your decision to not do something
because a preference is also a state that is rather stable and unchanging.
In this case, 不 is often added before an action verb. For instance,
The person was asked “你想吃這個嗎？ Do you want to eat this?”,
and she replied “我不吃”
to express her decision to not eat it.
Here is another example,
Here it’s the same, this “不” indicates that the speaker decided not to go.
Since 不 can be used to express decisions,
it can also be used to express a habit of not doing something,
since forming a habit consists of many little decisions we make, right?
For example:
Another situation where we use 不 is to negate modal verbs,
because modal verbs are used to express possibility like
“會 will”, “可能 might, possibly”,
or express intent like “要 to want to”, “想 to want to”,
or ability like “能 can”, “會 can (do a skill)”.
And all of them express some kind of unchanging state
or personal judgment so we use 不 to negate them
Here you can omit the “會” and just say 明天不下雨。
After learning the situations where we use 不 as the negation word,
now we’re going to learn when to use 沒（有）.
Both 不 and 沒 can negate action verbs,
but 不 expresses a preference, personal habit or decision,
while 沒 just simply indicates the fact that an action or event didn’t happen.
For example,
我不吃肉。
我沒吃肉。
The first one “我不吃肉” expresses that “you don’t eat meat”
it’s your decision or habit and it involves your personal preferences.
However, if you say “我沒吃肉”, this simply expresses that
the action of you eating meat didn’t happen.
Here is another example,
Here the person was asked “你拿走了嗎？Did you take them away?”
and she replied “我沒拿啊 I didn’t take them”.
Here she uses 沒 because she wanted to express that
the action “I take them” didn’t happen.
Even though 沒（有） can be used in any time frame,
since 沒 expresses something not happening,
it’s most often used to talk about past events.
Here are some other examples:
We use 沒 because we want to express that
“出門 to go out” didn’t take place yesterday.
Here, also, using 沒 to express that
the boss “來公司 to come to the company” didn’t happen last week.
Because 沒 can be used to negate the occurrence of an action,
we also use it to negate experience or an ongoing action
For example,
When 沒 is added before an action verb,
it negates the happening of the action.
沒 can also be used to modify some adjectives
to negate a change of state. For example,
Here 沒 implies that the change of the state
from good to broken didn’t happen.
So now you see both 沒（有）and 不 can be used to negate a state,
however, 沒 focuses on the changing of a state not happening,
and 不 expresses the non-existence of the state. For example,
我不瘦。
我沒瘦。
This sentence 我不瘦 expresses that
the state of “skinny” doesn’t exist in “我 (I, me)”,
and the other one 我沒瘦 indicates that
the change of state of getting thinner didn’t happen.
Alright, now you know when to use 不 and 沒（有）,
let’s do a quick recap:
In Chinese, we have two commonly used negation words — 不 and 沒（有）
Whenever you want to negate a noun
to express “to not have (something)”, use 沒（有）.
When negating verbs or adjectives, we use 不 to negate static states,
like “a quality or state”, “preference” or “modal verbs”,
which often involve personal judgments and thoughts.
While 沒 is used to negate objective facts like
the occurrence of an action or dynamic situations like a change of state.
That’s all for today!
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