Friday 6 July 2012


History about the French negative form ne+pas, point, goutte,,,
Have you ever wondered why French people use two words for the negative form? For instance, they say: "Je ne mange pas", Je ne veux pas", elle n'est pas contente",...
In the middle-age, only "ne" was used to express a negative sentence. Gradually, other words like "pas" / "point" were added and those words expressed a small quantity, a small thing, a small area,...
Examples: je ne marche pas (I am not doing a step) , je ne vois point (I can't even see a dot), je ne bois goutte (I don't drink a drop), je ne mange mie (I don't eat a crumb).
 Those little words lost their meaning and became a negative word associated to "ne".
It is the reason why we say today: Je ne veux pas partir, je ne veux point aller en ville, je ne vois goutte, ...



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