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Dans ce pays, il n'y a pas de montagnes.

Dans ce pays, il n'y a pas de montagnes.
In this country, there are no mountains.
From Lesson 16:Negating "there is" (il n'y a pas de)·French

Questions & Answers about Dans ce pays, il n'y a pas de montagnes.

Why is it de montagnes instead of des montagnes, since mountains is plural?
This is a special rule for negative sentences! In the positive sentence, you would say il y a des montagnes (there are mountains). But after negative expressions like il n'y a pas, the plural article des always changes to de.
How exactly do you build the negative for il y a?
Il y a means "there is" or "there are". To make it negative, you put the two parts of the negative, ne and pas, around the y a part. Because y acts as a vowel here, ne drops its 'e' and becomes n', giving us il n'y a pas.
Why does pays have an 's' at the end if the sentence says "this country" in the singular?
Some French words naturally end in 's' even when there is only one of them. Pays (country) is one of those words! It stays exactly the same in singular and plural. You can tell it means just one country here because it is paired with ce (this).
Why use ce for "this" instead of cet or cette?
Pays is a masculine word, and it starts with a consonant, so we use ce. You would use cette for feminine words (like cette ville for "this city"), and cet for masculine words starting with a vowel (like cet oiseau for "this bird").

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