Correct (written) French does not use just one word as an equivalent to the English word NOT. It uses a combination of two words ne and pas. The way French is spoken is another matter, we just use one of these two words.
Let’s start with the correct way first. ne .. verb .. pas, pronounced ne .... par.
Je fais zhe fay I am doing.
Je ne fais pas zhe ne fay par I am not doing.
We put ne in front of the verb and pas (pronounced ‘par’) after the verb.
Another example combining our verbs ALLER and FAIRE
Je vais le faire zhe vay le fair I am going to do it
Je ne vais pas le faire zhe ne vay par le fair I am not going to do it.
To apply this negative to the futur simple let’s take a look at ‘I will do it’
Je le ferai zhe le fe-ray I will do it
Je ne le ferai pas zhe ne le fe-ray par I will not do it (or, I won’t do it)
This is the grammatically correct way of using NOT in French and we will continue with further examples in the following chapters.
On va continuer We are going to continue
On ne vas pas continuer We are not going to continue.
As you may have guessed there is a shorter way of saying NOT in verbal communication. Even though grammatically it is not strictly correct, normally we only use the PAS after the verb.
Instead of saying ‘Je ne vais pas le faire’, the common way is to just say'
‘Je vais pas le faire’ I am not going to do it.
For the Anglophone mind this does seem strange at first. It is like saying we are going to do something and then say NOT afterwards as if we have just contradicted what we have just said. Remember that it is a short cut.
If you were using correct grammar, you would have already used a negative, ne, before using your verb. We won’t go into it in this text but the ne ...... pas format actually gives a lot of flexibility to forming different phrases.
One brief example, using just ne with plus, the French word for either ‘plus’ or ‘more’;
Il ne veut plus le faire il ne ve ploo le fair He doesn’t want to do it anymore
‘Pas’ (without being preceded by NE) is however the correct way to say NOT in all other circumstances.
Pourquoi pas pour-kwu par Why not?
Pas encore par encore/parz encore Not yet
Pas maintenant par ma-te-non’ Not now
Pas vrai par vray Not true
Before moving on to our next Chapter we need to start building some basic vocabulary. It will also give us more room to move in working with our verbs.
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