Chinese Grammar: Lesson: Standard negation with 不

An important thing to quickly learn in Chinese is how to say no to something. The most common form of negation in Chinese is 不(bù). It's very easy to use, as you're going to see here!

Using 不

不 is used to negate actions in the present, and can also be used in the future. 不 can be used with almost all verbs.

Here's how 不 works:

Structure

S + 不 + V (+ Object).

As you see: To say no in Chinese, simply use 不 + the verb you want to say no about.

Examples

我不是.
I am not.

我不是 中国人。
I am not Chinese.

我不喜欢 看 电视。
I don't like watching TV.

不 in the future

不 also works to negate actions in the future. This how it works:

他 明天不能 来。
He can't come tomorrow.

我 明天不去 学校。
I will not go to school tomorrow.

See the presence of the word 明天 "tomorrow" in the sentences above? That's what tells you the sentence is taking place in the future.

不 to talk about habits

If there's no mention of time in the sentence, then you can consider 不 is being used to negate a habit, an action repeated over time. These examples will help you understand this better.

Examples

我不喝 咖啡。
I don't drink coffee (in general, ever)

我明天不喝 咖啡。
I won't drink coffee tomorrow (I usually do, but tomorrow I won't)

Do you see the difference?

It's fairly straightforward, don't worry.

When you can't use 不

Remember how we said 不 worked with almost all verbs? The only verb you can’t use 不 with is 有 (to have), in fact. With 有 you use a different negation word 没.

不 can also never be used to talk about past actions. Conveniently, negating past actions also use the same negation word 没, which you'll learn in a next lesson.

All right, now you know everything you need to know about 不! Time for a few sentence-building sessions with Yocha and you'll be all set to say no in Chinese with 不!

In the next lesson, you're going to learn about adjectives' special powers in Chinese! You're also going to learn that 不 also works with adjectives.