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C'est un grand pays, mais il n'y a pas de rivières.

C'est un grand pays, mais il n'y a pas de rivières.
It is a big country, but there are no rivers.
From Lesson 16:Negating "there is" (il n'y a pas de)·French

Questions & Answers about C'est un grand pays, mais il n'y a pas de rivières.

Why is it pas de rivières and not pas des rivières? 'Rivers' is plural!
When you make a sentence negative in French, the plural article des changes to de. The expression il n'y a pas de (there is no / there are no) is a fixed phrase. Because of this rule, you will always use de here instead of des, even with a plural noun like rivières.
How exactly does il y a (there is/are) turn into il n'y a pas?
To make a phrase negative, you put ne and pas around the verb. In the phrase il y a, the verb is a. The pronoun y sticks with the verb, so the negative part ne goes right before the y. Because y acts like a vowel, ne drops its 'e' and becomes n'.
Why does pays have an 's' at the end if we are only talking about one country?
Some French words naturally end in an 's' even in their singular form, and pays (country) is one of them. It is spelled exactly the same way whether you are talking about one country or several. We know it is singular here because it uses the singular article un (a).
Why does grand come before pays? Don't French adjectives usually go after the noun?
Most of the time, yes! However, there is a small group of short, common adjectives that go before the noun. A helpful trick is the 'BAGS' rule: adjectives describing Beauty, Age, Goodness, or Size usually come first. Since grand (big) describes size, it goes in front of pays.

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