Today, we’re going to learn about negation with words like, “not” and “no”.

First, let’s look at a couple of examples :

I have not read this book : मैंने यह किताब नहीं पढ़ी (है)

He does not do good work : वह काम नहीं करता (है)

For both of these sentences, (है) is in parentheses. That’s because placing है at the end of a sentence is sometimes optional. In English as in Hindi, you can create a negative sentence with the positive verb है.

Like in these examples :

Nowadays he doesn’t go to the office : वह आजकल दफ़्तर नहीं जाता है

He is not here : वह यहाँ नहीं है

In all four sentences, the word for “not” was नहीं. In all these sentences नहीं was placed before the main verb.

Let’s do a sample practice. If “I will go” in Hindi is मैं जाऊँगा, what is “I won’t go”?

The answer is: मैं नहीं जाऊँगा

Now let’s look at a sentence like this:

No, this is not mine either : नहीं, यह मेरा भी नहीं  है

नहीं can also mean “no” as in the example above.

�