Traps with negation
Four slips that turn a correctly negated Serbian sentence into a wrong one: a negative pronoun standing in for не instead of alongside it, не left as two separate words in front of имати instead of fusing into немати, a negative adverb pulled apart from the не it belongs next to, and не left unfused in front of бити instead of becoming није. Ten minutes of building the right version and catching each mistake before it happens - the last of the series, right before the unit's own listening story.
The part of the grammar page this lesson drills — read it here, then use it.
не + verb - the general rule
Не is unstressed and always sits immediately before the verb it negates, never separated from it by another word. Не гледам телевизију. (I don't watch television.) - see present-tense-regular-verbs-a1.
Negative pronouns and adverbs require double negation
Serbian has a full set of negative pronouns and adverbs (see the table below). Whenever one appears in a sentence, the verb still needs its own не (or the fused нисам/нема) - dropping it is wrong even though the sentence already has a negative word.
Нико не зна literally reads "Nobody doesn't know," but means simply "Nobody knows." This double marking is required, not optional, however many negative words the sentence has: Никад никог нигде не видим. (I never see anyone anywhere.) stacks three negatives plus не, and that's entirely normal, correct Serbian.
Special cases
Немати already carries its own negation, so it's never paired with a second не before it - but it still triggers the same double-negation pattern with negative pronouns: Немам ништа. (I have nothing.), not *Имам ништа.
Нема (the impersonal 3rd-person form of немати) also means "there isn't/aren't any": Нема никог код куће. (There is nobody home.)
| Word | Means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| niko | nobody | Niko ne zna. |
| ništa | nothing | Nemam ništa. |
| nikad(a) | never | Nikad ne kasnim. |
| nigde | nowhere | On nije nigde. |
| nijedan/nijedna/nijedno | not a single one | Nijedan student ne dolazi. |