Breakdown of Das Auto ist neu und sehr teuer.
sein
to be
und
and
sehr
very
das Auto
the car
teuer
expensive
neu
new
Questions & Answers about Das Auto ist neu und sehr teuer.
Since this lesson is about negation, how would I use nicht to say the car is not new?
To negate the adjectives in this sentence, you place nicht right after the verb. You would say: Das Auto ist nicht neu und sehr teuer. When adjectives come after the verb, nicht steps in right before the words it negates.
What if I only want to negate the expensive part, meaning the car is new, but not very expensive?
You can target exactly what you want to negate by putting nicht right in front of it! To say 'The car is new and not very expensive', you simply place the negation before the second adjective: Das Auto ist neu und nicht sehr teuer.
Why don't the adjectives neu and teuer have any special endings here, like neues?
In German, adjectives only get special grammatical endings when they are placed directly before the noun (like in das neue Auto). Because neu and teuer come after the verb ist, they stay in their basic, unchanged dictionary form.
Why is it das Auto and not der or die?
Auto is a grammatically neuter noun, so it uses the neuter article das (the). Grammatical genders in German don't always align with living versus non-living things, so it is a great habit to always memorize the article together with the noun as one package: das Auto.
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